"You can't just cherry-pick history"
  March 2, 2023 Looking cute today, Meteor readers! Do we have anyone from Italy with us today? Apparently, some Italian Starbucks stores have started offering a new coffee drink with a twist ingredient: olive oil. If you’ve tried it, please tell me whether it’s a horror or a revelation. My inbox is open.  In the meantime, how ’bout I treat you to some news? It’s officially Women’s History Month, and we’ve decided to celebrate by including a little slice of history every week. Today, Rebecca Carroll writes about Toni Morrison’s Beloved—and the real woman the novel was based on. And we’ll also learn about Hippocrates, the right’s latest darling, who, according to Renee Bracey Sherman, may have been more enlightened than they claim. But first: the news. Bailey Wayne Hundl  WHAT'S GOING ONThe growing child labor scandal: The Biden administration announced a Department of Labor (DOL) investigation into major American companies’ use of child labor, following the release of a major New York Times investigation into dangerous factory jobs being performed by migrant children. Even before its most recent announcement, the DOL had seen the number of child labor law violations increase by almost 70% since 2018. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) then expanded the DOL’s previous investigation into migrant children—some as young as 13—found cleaning blood and animal parts off the floors of slaughterhouses. You would think these headlines might lead to greater vigilance nationwide surrounding child labor laws. But just yesterday, the Arkansas House’s Public Health, Welfare, and Labor Committee passed H.B. 1410, which would eliminate the need for 14- and 15-year-olds to obtain and submit to employers a certificate showing they are entitled to work legally. Bill sponsor Sen. Rebecca Burkes (R) said that the current form creates an unnecessary hurdle in the hiring process. But, as Laura Kellan of Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families pointed out, employment certificates only inconvenience companies who are illegally hiring minors. “We’re worried about the children who are at risk of being exploited and who are being exploited today,” Kellan said. AND:
 CHERRY-PICKING HISTORYThe Anti-Abortion Movement's Man-Crush on Hippocrates"I'm calling bullshit," says Renee Bracey Sherman  PEOPLE RALLY IN FRONT OF THE U.S. SUPREME COURT DURING THE 50TH ANNUAL MARCH FOR LIFE RALLY IN WASHINGTON, DC. (PHOTO BY CHIP SOMODEVILLA/GETTY IMAGES) The Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, named for ancient Greek physician Hippocrates of “do no harm” fame, sounds like a benevolent organization. But the AHM is actually a virulently anti-abortion group, backed by lawyers who have passed many of the last decade’s strictest anti-trans laws—and they are currently fighting in an Amarillo, Texas courtroom to have mifepristone banned from its current use as an abortion pill. But in addition to all the other ways in which they are wrong, writer, activist, and We Testify founder Renee Bracey Sherman says they’ve got Hippocrates wrong too. OK, so what’s the myth about Hippocrates, and what’s the truth? So there's a line in the Hippocratic oath that basically says, "I will not give a woman an abortion pessary,” which was a suppository. Anti-abortion advocates have used this to claim that doctors should not provide abortions because it goes against the Hippocratic oath to do no harm. However, Hippocrates didn’t even write the oath himself! And [my co-author Regina Mahone and I] found research showing that Hippocrates actually gave out many recipes about how to do an abortion, both as a suppository and as a tea (or a “potion,” as they were called). John M. Riddle's book Eve's Herbs argues that the Greek phrase meaning “abortive pessary” was changed later to mean all abortions rather than just one method. In other words, Hippocrates' writings have been mistranslated, misunderstood, misappropriated, and downright mangled. And why does it matter? Because the anti-abortion movement cannot just cherry-pick which parts of history they want to keep and which ones they don't. They want to hold on to someone like Hippocrates, because they believe in ancient Greek and Roman medicine, and because they revere ancient white society. And they want to say that the original physician—for whatever that’s worth—said, “No abortions!” But that’s simply not true. [Meanwhile], they want to throw out Black and brown communities that have been teaching abortion for thousands of years. This is not the first time that they've done this. They do this with Dr. Martin Luther King and other black civil rights revolutionaries—they say that they're anti-abortion, but the evidence is to the contrary. MLK accepted an award from Planned Parenthood and literally wrote a note thanking them for it, saying, “This will be among my most cherished possessions.” Coretta Scott King went to the event to accept the award on his behalf. They're rewriting history. It ties deeply into this moment where [conservatives] are trying to ban books in school and Black history lessons. They are trying to get rid of our history, because if we don't know our history, we can't sit here and say: That is simply not true. I'm calling bullshit. And abortion has always been our right historically. This entire lawsuit is built on misinformation and a misreading of the historical facts. And it starts with the name of the organization. It’s all a hill of lies.  A 🍕 OF HISTORYThe History of Toni Morrison's Beloved and the Real Woman Who Inspired ItIt’s Women’s History Month. And every week, a Meteor collective member recounts a piece of women’s history that resonates with them. First up: Rebecca Carroll.  NOBLE, THOMAS SATTERWHITE. THE MODERN MEDEA. 1867. PHOTOGRAPH. When I discovered the work of Toni Morrison in college, it felt like the sky had cracked open and released a magnificent Black language and legacy for which I’d been waiting a lifetime. All of the characters and stories in Morrison’s books are stubbornly elegant in their own way, achingly intimate, and resolutely real. But it’s stunning to know now that one of her most chilling stories—Beloved, which is both widely considered to be her magnum opus and has been challenged and even banned by some high schools—is based on a real person: Margaret Garner. Morrison’s 1987 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel tells the story of Sethe, a woman who has escaped the Kentucky plantation on which she was enslaved to live free in Ohio, where we find her after the Civil War. However, Sethe’s home is haunted by a ghost called Beloved—the word inscribed on the tombstone of Sethe’s first, unnamed daughter, whom she killed to protect from a life of enslavement. The first time I read the book—long before I became a mother myself—I remember thinking that her horrific, unthinkable act was a plausible choice for a parent to make. And that was before I understood that the story was based on Margaret Garner, who escaped enslavement in Kentucky with her husband and four young children only to find her family surrounded by slave catchers in Ohio. In that desperate moment, she slit the throat of her two-year-old daughter, started to kill her other children, and planned to kill herself to prevent their return to enslavement. She failed, was prosecuted for “damage to property” and sold to her original owner’s brother. And yet her story—the way that her unimaginable trauma fueled her fierce mother-love—has become part of our collective history. But perhaps more than that, Garner’s story inspired the genius of another Black woman, and together, Garner and Morrison have given all of us an extraordinary narrative that demonstrates the tethered intersection of Blackness and womanness.  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.  FOLLOW THE METEOR    Thank you for reading The Meteor! Got this from a friend? Sign up for your own copy, sent Tuesdays and Thursdays.
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What come after an uprising?
  February 16, 2023 Hello, Meteor readers, I couldn’t help but notice that it’s been two days since Valentine’s Day and none of you have sent me my roses. Listen, I get it. The postal service can be slow. I’m sure your love is in the mail. Still, though…you couldn’t overnight it?  In today’s newsletter, Samhita Mukhopadhyay sits down with Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, co-founder of the new Black-centric magazine Hammer & Hope, to discuss Black resistance, cross-cultural solidarity, and what happened (and didn’t) after 2020. But first: the news. Double-checking my mailbox, Bailey Wayne Hundl  WHAT'S GOING ONA letter to the editor: On Wednesday, a collective of New York Times contributors published an open letter to Philip B. Corbett, the Times’ associate managing editor for standards. In it, they addressed the “editorial bias in the newspaper’s reporting on transgender, non-binary, and gender nonconforming people.” The letter cited multiple instances in which the Times amplified anti-trans rhetoric, such as one story describing a trans child as “patient zero.” (Following the letter’s example, we will not provide links to these stories.) And how did the Times respond to this civil, well-stated, and widely supported request? By publishing an op-ed this morning titled “In Defense of J.K. Rowling.” In case you’ve not been burdened with the curse of knowledge, I regret to inform you that the Harry Potter author’s transphobic views have been well-documented. In the op-ed, writer Pamela Paul (who last summer claimed that trans inclusivity threatened women’s rights as much as the far right does) compares the “dangerous” criticism Rowling faces to Salman Rushdie, who was stabbed multiple times last year. A key difference here—along with the fact that Rowling has not, and likely will not, be stabbed—is that Rushdie faced direct death threats from the former Supreme Leader of Iran; Rowling faces exasperated trans people who just want her to stop tweeting. But the op-ed is one thing; the timing of it is another. It could not be more disrespectful to the thoughtful signers of the letter. If you’d like to add your name to theirs, you can sign here. AND:
 A NEW SPACE FOR BLACK RESISTANCE“After the Uprising, What is To Be Done?” Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor on a magazine that starts to answer that question BY SAMHITA MUKHOPADHYAY  A BLM PROTESTOR RALLIES A CROWD (IMAGE BY TAYFUN COSKUN/ANADOLU AGENCY VIA GETTY IMAGES) After 2020, scholar, author, and columnist Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor and Jen Parker, editor and New York Times alum, saw a gap in how Black politics and resistance were being covered in the media. It was clear that people were angry and fired up—but where was the publication that could serve as a roadmap for a movement? So they came up with the idea for a new magazine focused on Black politics and culture. Launched on Wednesday, Hammer & Hope says it plans to serve as a place for people to hash out the most important ideas in movement building and beyond. This week, I had the distinct pleasure of sitting down to talk to Keeanga about the new magazine and why we need it now. Samhita Mukhopadhyay: Talk about how this project came to be and why you decided you wanted to do it. I mean, you're so busy—a magazine?! Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor: I met Jen in the fall of 2019 [as my editor at The New York Times], and when the events of 2020 happened, both of us felt the absence of a venue to really engage with some of the debates that were emerging over what the nature of police reform should be, can the police be reformed, and what activists and organizers should be doing. There were millions of people on the streets and uprisings in different cities, yet there was little organizational cohesion. And so the questions of “What needs to happen? What should happen next?” or “Where does all this energy go?” It just felt like those types of questions weren't being fully engaged. So we spent the last two years trying to make it happen—a publication that saw itself as part of these discussions, a space where people on the ground could come talk about these ideas, [ask] strategic and tactical questions, but also the political questions that arise out of those debates. SM: You've recently written about the attack on Black studies, and even your own work has been banned [from A.P. curriculum by the College Board]. Why is Black rebellion and resistance so important to our understanding of history, and where does this project fit within that? KYT: You've got the governors of states trying to ban any discussion about Black history. And that is because the Black movement, probably more than any other, really exposes the hypocrisy at the center of American history. Black people were brought here as slave labor, and then when slavery ended, you had another hundred years of legal subjugation. With those 400 years of conscripted, codified racism, discrimination, and subjugation, the entire idea that the United States is a unique democracy…falls apart and is a complete farce. And some of that is revealing, too, in terms of what it says about white people. Because as James Baldwin once said, “If we are not who you think we are, then who are you?” So if you've built the entire foundation of the country based on this idea of Black people being subordinate and inferior, and it's not true, then it's deeply destabilizing when they rise up. And then the second part of it is that if it's true that there are 400 years of legal oppression and exploitation, then maybe the claims of Black people are legitimate; then maybe the claims for redress, for reparations, for programmatic interventions from the state—that has legitimacy. And that is something that neither liberals nor conservatives really want to talk about. They don't want to pay the price tag—the trillion dollar price tag—that comes with not even the question of reparations, but what does it mean to invest in schools? What does it mean to repair housing? What does it mean to provide meaningful jobs for people? They don't want to deal with any of that. And you have to deal with that if you deal with Black history. And so that history remains marginalized and out of our discussions. And so, of course, we want to bring that to the surface, but we want to do it in a way that is not just about Black rebellion unto itself. We're interested in the politics of solidarity. Even if we say that Black people bear the brunt of racism, discrimination, and exploitation in the United States, we know that Black people aren't the only ones who experience that. We have to show what connects us and brings us together and organize a struggle and a fight around that. SM: Much of your work critically engages with identity politics and how it’s merged with a neoliberal sense of diversity. You get into that in your book Let's Get Free, and you have talked about that with Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò, author of Elite Capture—who's also in the inaugural issue. But there is a very big interest in representation in pop culture. What do you think about the energy that goes into that? KYT: We have an interview in the magazine with myself, Durecka Purnell and Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò, titled “After The Uprising, What is To Be Done?” We talk about how symbolic representation has been offered as an alternative to substantive change in the last several years. So we don't get meaningful police reform, but we get Juneteenth as a holiday. We don't get substantive reform regarding housing—where you have Black women who are the one demographic most likely to be evicted in the United States—but we get a Black woman on the Supreme Court or a Black woman as the vice president. And that is supposed to satisfy the needs of Black women somehow. There's certainly a problem with the kind of over-emphasis on representation…[which] has become easier to deliver than the substantive change that people want. [That’s] why the level of tension socially is escalating. The ability to simply pay people off with representational or token support versus actually transforming a situation…I think people, in many ways, are rejecting that. And you might be happy or satisfied with the individual, but the idea that that would supplant a particular program or funding or something with some substance to it is really less [acceptable] with every passing day. And we obviously think that issues concerning race and gender and sexuality and ability and nationality and where you come from, immigrant status and all of that, are important, and particular struggles exist around each of them. At the same time, we want to understand how solidarity can bring different struggles and movements together. And that's part of the point of this publication, to create a space where we really work that out. SM: And the magazine is free? You can't build a movement behind a paywall. And why on earth, if we've got Chase Strangio talking about the attacks on trans people and their relationship to the attacks on Black people—why are we charging anybody to read that?  FOLLOW THE METEOR    Thank you for reading The Meteor! Got this from a friend? Sign up for your own copy, sent Tuesdays and Thursdays.
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27 Years After the Vagina Monologues
FEATURED STORY
The writer V—formerly Eve Ensler—on what’s changed for her and the world.
BY CINDI LEIVE
February 3, 2023
It’s been a quarter century since the performer Eve Ensler—who now goes by V—created the culture-changing play The Vagina Monologues and, shortly thereafter, the anti-violence organization V-Day. Times have changed—we now have more inclusive definitions of gender—but V’s gift as a writer has not. Her new book, Reckoning, touches on many topics but cuts deepest when it chronicles her decades-long recovery from childhood abuse.
Actually, let me restate because, after talking to V, I’m disinclined to use clichés: her decades-long recovery from her father raping her and her mother protecting him. And as you’ll hear, that specificity matters.
CL: You’ve been writing about violence for four decades. We’re more willing to have these discussions now. But how are you feeling about these issues in 2023?
V: We’ve had amazing victories. We’ve broken taboos. We’ve opened safe houses, we’ve changed laws, we’ve activated young people. A lot of wonderful things happened. But the essential problem is we have patriarchy. We can have one-off wins, but we’re still in that system where very, very, very few, usually men, have all the wealth, all the power, all the ability to determine who is valuable, who is worthy, who gets to live, who gets to die, who has money, who doesn’t, and that all the rest need to be controlled or gotten rid of. Are we going to stay like that? Or are we going to say—finally at last—we don’t accept this way of operating? Because otherwise we will be in this struggle for eternity.
Cindi Leive: One of the things that has always affected me about your writing—going back to when I first saw The Vagina Monologues in the mid-90s—is how specific you always are in your language. You write in Reckoning that “violence against women” has become too abstract and broad a term. What do you mean by that?
V: I’ve always been despondent over the terms that we keep using for violence against women. They just seem to get more and more distant, more and more abstract, as the violence seems to get more and more amplified and horrific. And I don’t think that’s accidental.
When we talk about “gender-based violence,” who’s doing the violence? What is exactly being done, and who’s it being done to? The confusion of that takes the responsibility off the perpetrator. It really should be “men committing violence against women.” I mean, not all violence against women is by men, but a great deal of it is. And when you say “rape,” it’s very different than when you say “gender-based violence.” One you have an image of, and can see. With “gender-based violence,” I have no vision of what that is.
In writing The Apology [V’s 2019 book in which she imagines her father apologizing to her], it was very clear to me that there is no apology without a rendering of the specific details of what you have done. Because in that specificity, both you—the victim—and the perpetrator know you were present at the same event. If you say “I’m sorry I abused you,” that’s not an indication that you were there. But if you say “I’m sorry I walked into your room that had the gingham sheets and the pink bedspread” then you both know you were in the same room, and you’re accountable to the same moment.
CL: In the book, speaking of your own experience, you write, “this abuse altered the constitutional makeup of my entire being. It filled my cells and blood and body with terror, worry, guilt, and dread—that would in my teenage years and on until my sixties develop into all-encompassing self-hatred and anxiety.” That’s a really devastating sentence. But it also made me a little bit hopeful because you say “until my sixties,” which implies that you have perhaps found some peace.
V: One of the things about the kind of violence that happens to women is that no one really wants to think about long-term consequences. We talk about it as if it’s a one-off event when in fact it radically alters a woman’s life forever, right? I don’t know any woman who was abused sexually as a child or a young woman who has not had huge intimacy issues, particularly if they were incested by a family member. Nobody talks about what it does to your memory or your ability to think or your willingness and ability to be a leader, because then you’re seen and then you become a target and then you could be raped again.
I’ve had to do a lot of work to escape, and by no means am I fully out of it. There are things that can trigger me and put me back into it. But since I wrote The Apology, I will say I’m in a very different place. I felt I was forever in my father’s story, and that has changed. Yes, I got very damaged and broken early on…but it’s not the sum of me, it’s not the total of me. And that’s amazing. I never thought that I would ever see that.
Cindi Leive is the co-founder of The Meteor, the former editor-in-chief of Glamour and Self, and the author or producer of best-selling books including Together We Rise.
What Does the Brett Kavanaugh Documentary Do For Us?
  January 26, 2023 Buona sera Meteor readers, This send is somewhat bittersweet. Sweet because it’s, as usual, chock full of interesting stories you may or may not have heard about, like the new slate of anti-LGBTQ bills in Indiana, the latest on Brittney Griner, and a look at the Brett Kavanaugh documentary Justice which premiered at Sundance last week. But it’s bitter because it is also the last newsletter I’ll be writing for quite some time—because I am having a baby 🐣. It’s been an absolute joy and privilege to be a part of all 105 Meteor newsletters so far (who’s counting, me, I’m counting). We’ve written through fun times and through absolute horror, and with each send our community has grown, and so have I. But, alas, it’s time for me to prep for my biggest project of all: parenthood. My firstborn is due to arrive soon and while I’d love to hang out here with all of you, my fingers have swollen to the size of stuffed Vienna sausages, and it’s time to hand the keyboard over to someone else for a bit. So I really hope you enjoy this one. My daughter and I will see you all on the other side.  Marie Kondo-ing my baby’s drawers, Shannon Melero  WHAT'S GOING ON“Slate of hate”: Indiana is imitating Florida with a new batch of bills aimed at making the lives of school-aged LGBTQ children absolutely miserable. In total, there are three bills, including one in the Indiana House and one in its Senate, which both move to outlaw the mention of “gender fluidity; gender roles; gender stereotypes; gender identity; gender expression; or sexual orientation,” in grades K-12 in the classroom, among other things. And while these bills are frightening and intrusive—and would, by the way, keep all children from learning about gender—the third bill manages to one-up them both: LGBTQ news outlet them reports that SB 354 would “require schools to notify parents if a student ‘has conflicted feelings’ about gender identity, or if they change their name, attire, or pronoun ‘in a manner that is inconsistent with the student’s biological sex at birth’.” Let’s call this what it is: mandatory outing. Indiana lawmakers think it’s a good idea for teachers to start outing kids to their parents—without any knowledge of how those parents will react. And to what end, other than to put students at risk? I’m seriously asking. Class is canceled: Yesterday, students walked out of John Comaroff’s class at Harvard due to the school’s handling of Comaroff’s alleged sexual misconduct. (He had been accused of groping and harassing three graduate students last year.) One student read from a statement that said, in part, “We don’t want to be taught by someone who has still not been held accountable for or made amends for their sexual misconduct. If you agree, please join us in walking out of this classroom.” (At least 100 people did.) According to the Harvard Crimson, Comaroff was placed on leave last year after violating the university’s sexual harassment policy. (An internal investigation found that the accusations made against him were plausible, but no criminal charges were brought, and he is still tenured at Harvard.) For Harvard alum and our Meteor colleague Tara Abrahams, this was simply history repeating itself. Exactly 25 years ago this spring, Abrahams, then a junior at the school, wrote in Harvard Magazine about a similar situation in which “Harvard had not explicitly condemned sexual harassment and inappropriate conduct through real action, but had privately admonished a guilty faculty member.” After seeing all of those students take a stand against Comaroff and the institution’s decision to allow him to keep teaching, Abrahams told me, “I wish that the bravery of the students I spoke to more than 20 years ago had counted for more, that their speaking out would have meant that these young people would be able to experience a different Harvard today…And maybe I even feel a tiny glimmer of hope—that because of these kids standing up, one day, enough really will be enough.” AND:
 THE METEOR AT SUNDANCEDoes Justice Serve Justice? BOSS BABY BIG MAD! (IMAGE BY WIN McNAMEE VIA GETTY IMAGES) This past weekend, at the Sundance film festival, I caught the surprise feature Justice—a documentary about the allegations which surfaced against Brett Kavanaugh before his Supreme Court confirmation. The movie picks up where the botched FBI investigation ended—you know, the one that reportedly generated 4500 tips that the Trump White House ignored. The film doesn’t reveal anything particularly new—but it will absolutely resurface your rage. Justice does add context to what we already know, especially through a rigorous deep dive into fellow Yale student Deborah Ramirez’s allegations that Kavanaugh exposed himself to her at a party while they were undergraduates. According to the documentary, the FBI talked to Ramirez when they re-opened the investigation after Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony, but allegedly failed to follow up with any of the witnesses Ramirez’s team provided. Instead, they turned her testimony over to the Senate Judiciary Committee but Ramirez was never called to testify. The most damning bit of the movie is audio of Max Stier, one of Kavanaugh’s classmates at Yale and now the CEO of the nonpartisan DC group Partnership for Public Service. In the recording, which Stier allegedly submitted to the FBI in the days after Dr. Ford’s testimony as well, he both corroborates Ramirez’s account of what happened and describes another incident he witnessed. In the audio, Stier says that he was in a room where Kavanaugh was drunk and had his pants down, with a group of fellow students trying to force a young woman to touch his penis. As journalists Robin Pogrebin and Kate Kelly reported in their 2019 book, The Education of Brett Kavanaugh: An Investigation, the FBI did not follow up on Stier’s allegations. Kavanaugh was confirmed without the public hearing them. But hearing them out loud now is gutting. Stier himself did not speak to the filmmakers, and similarly, the movie is haunted by the absence of Dr. Ford, who is seen briefly at the beginning, and in clips throughout. (Director Doug Liman says it’s because she’s given enough to the country already; no argument there. As she told the Meteor in 2021, the months and years since the hearings have been brutal.) The movie is a stark portrait of one of the darkest moments in the history of American democracy, and it’s hard not to walk out retriggered, especially with the four years we’ve experienced since Dr. Ford’s gutting testimony. But in 2023, anger doesn’t feel like enough. Justice doesn’t get us much closer to accountability for the survivors—or change the reality that a sitting Supreme Court justice most likely perjured himself. Hopefully, this documentary is the beginning of a process—not just of rage but of actual, what’s the word, justice. But that’s unlikely. -Samhita Mukhopdhyay  FOLLOW THE METEOR    Thank you for reading The Meteor! Got this from a friend? Sign up for your own copy, sent Tuesdays and Thursdays. Ideas? Feedback? Requests? Tell us what you think at [email protected]
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Literally, Who Is George Santos?
  January 19, 2023 Blessed eve to you, Meteor readers, Today I’m thinking about New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, who announced that she would resign before her country’s next election. And she’s not doing it because of scandal or because she thinks she can’t win another election. (Shit, I’d vote for her if I could.) She’s doing it because, as she said, there just isn’t enough in her tank to do the job to the level of excellence she’s previously provided.  This really struck me. I’m so accustomed to American culture, where you work and do a job until it absolutely hobbles you, and then, in your depleted state, you do a little more. Imagine being so in tune with yourself and caring for your country so much that you can put your ego to the side and make a selfless decision like that. The zipping sound you hear is my suitcase closing as I head to catch a flight to NZ to ask Jacinda Ardern to be my new mentor. But before I board, we’ve got a great newsletter for you today with a look into the many lived lives of George Santos and a special announcement waiting for you down unda’. Evaluating all tank levels, Shannon Melero  WHAT'S GOING ONGeorgie boy: Where do we even begin? If you haven’t been following the walking VEEP episode that is the George Santos saga, bottom line is that this New Yorker’s election win helped Republicans cinch a narrow lead in the House last November. Santos’s campaign had been built on a litany of inspiring, heartwarming stories that were almost too good to be true. And as it turns out—they weren’t. As he tells it, Santos’ parents were both immigrants: his father from Brazil, his mother from Europe, where she “fled socialism.” (I really didn’t want to interrupt myself so early, but FYI, they’re both from Brazil.) He says they enrolled him in Horace Mann Prep, but tragically, they couldn’t afford to keep him enrolled; he had to drop out four months before graduation. (Sorry to interrupt again, but as a representative from Horace Mann told CNN, “There is no evidence that George Santos (or any alias) attended.”) Speaking of his mother: According to Santos, the September 11 attacks claimed her life. Wait, no, sorry. She died in 2016, also according to him. But she was, he claims, in her office in the South Tower when the plane hit…which is a bit odd, considering her official immigration documents place her in Brazil at that time. Is now a bad time to bring up his claims that his grandmother was a victim of the Holocaust? (She wasn’t.) But enough talk about the distant past. Let’s discuss something more recent! In 2016, he raised $3,000 through GoFundMe to remove a life-threatening tumor from the dog of a disabled veteran. So sweet—or at least it would have been if he hadn’t kept the money for himself. Honestly, I could go on. He may or may not have a husband. He may or may not have stolen his roommate’s scarf to wear to a Trump rally. He may or may not have once been a drag queen (which, for some reason, is one of the only stories that he’s addressed). There’s a lot of uncertainty when it comes to Santos, but one thing is clear: The Republicans made a desperate mistake relying on him for their majority, just another in a long line of frantic clings to power with no thought for what it might mean for our country. But surely a politician with this many blatant, bald-faced lies can’t maintain his position for long…Right? AND:
—Bailey Wayne Hundl  METEOR IRL  FOLLOW THE METEOR Thank you for reading The Meteor! Got this from a friend? Sign up for your own copy, sent Tuesdays and Thursdays. Ideas? Feedback? Requests? Tell us what you think at [email protected]
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"They Chose to Make History."
"THEY CHOSE TO MAKE HISTORY"
For Iranian American journalist Neda Semnani, 2022 belongs to the women and girls of Iran.
BY NEDA TOLOUI-SEMNANI
December 20, 2022
Mahsa ‘Jina’ Amini, a Kurdish-Iranian woman, was on her way to the rest of her life when she was profiled, detained, and allegedly beaten to death in Tehran, Iran in September.
Amini’s fate, like so many other women’s, was decided in a split second by a man who looked at her and saw only what he wanted to see: her hijab askew. Both she and he knew that the systems and institutions of the country were created to benefit one of them over the other.
Perhaps if Amini had died at another moment in time, no one but her family would have known her story. But on this particular day, the young women and girls of Iran decided to reclaim her agency and their own.
They chose to make history.
They flooded the streets and social media en masse to mourn Amini—but not only Amini. They mourned all the others who had died, who were imprisoned, who were held down by hopelessness. Iran’s women wept in public, many pulling off their state-sanctioned hijabs and cutting off their hair. And they weren’t alone. Every other marginalized group in the country joined them: Kurds and Baluchs, Black and queer, Ba’hai and Jewish, and so many others. Each person demanding equal rights for women. Each person taking up space and screaming for their history—our history—to be acknowledged, to be heard, to be integrated into the story of their country and the world at large.
As an Iranian American and a journalist, I have watched all of this from the safety of my New York apartment. Never have I felt as connected to my ancestral homeland and its people as I have during these long weeks, and never have I felt the distance between us so acutely.
Since the uprising began, Iranians—women, men, and non-binary people—have burned their hijabs and the Iranian flag; they’ve come together in public; they’ve made music and theater, harnessed spray paint and brushes; they’ve danced and kissed in the streets. Each nonviolent action like a ballistic missile aimed at the core of the ruthless regime and its sophisticated surveillance state.
And after the women and girls of Iran decided to stand together, the men who rule the country fell apart. They began clutching at power through blunt force and unimaginable brutality. Since September, the Islamic Republic has killed more than 500 people, including at least 57 children, and arrested more than 1800. They have made freedom fighters of school girls and martyrs of teenagers. They’ve rounded up and jailed more than 58 journalists, most of whom are women. They’ve set fire to a prison which was filled past capacity with dissidents. They’ve used buckshot to shoot at women’s faces and genitals; hundreds of protestors have lost their eyesight. The security forces have used ambulances to pick up demonstrators and monitored hospitals to find those who had gotten away. They’ve raped and sexually assaulted protesters, many of whom are in their teens and early 20s. Security forces have allegedly tried to stop people from witnessing atrocities by shooting into homes where people were looking out of their windows.
Then last month, the parliament went further. It voted to make protest punishable by death, dissolving whatever trust was left in the Islamic Republic and officially pitting the government against its people.
Sham trials followed. Last week, in the city of Mashhad, cranes were erected, stretching high into the air. Steel trees bearing strange fruit: two young men dead, their bodies hanging above the heads of the people.
Their names are Mohsen Shekari and Majidreza Rahnavard. They may have been the first and second official execution, but they are not the first or second to die at the hands of the Islamic Republic.
The point of these killings isn’t to punish individuals or to protect the regime or warn off protesters; it is an attempt to obliterate hope. Yet they can’t extinguish what doesn’t exist. Because the simple truth is that as long as this regime is in power, the people say there is no hope in their future; their hope will be reborn when this regime is gone. So the revolution marches on and the people chant, “Thousands stand behind each one killed.” In other words: “You can’t kill us all.”
***
This Iranian uprising, this revolution, keeps falling in and out of the headlines, a fact that belies its global importance. Iran at this moment contains the intersection of so many issues: economics, foreign policy, technology, health, religion, sectarianism, race, and class—underpinned, at least for now, by feminist values. It is like nothing we’ve seen before, making it arguably the most important story in the world, the most important story of our time.
We’re watching one generation rise up where others have cowered. We’re watching the people come together to champion the rights of women. We’re watching them reach for democratic values and ideals, not with resources or institutional support, but with their weapons of choice: speech, assembly, art, music, literature, poetry, fashion, and movement.
As an Iranian, an American, and a woman, I’m devastated that for many outside Iran, this moment is, at most, a hashtag and a chance for people to push their political agendas. Women, minorities, and their allies are being attacked by their government and fighting for their very survival. It isn’t on the front page of every country’s newspapers, but it should be.
So what can we do, you and I, to show up and engage with this moment? We have to support these women, children, men, boys, and non-binary Iranians by going out of our way to report their stories and amplify their voices. As we see more Iranians flee their country, we must open our own borders and provide refuge.
Finally, we must acknowledge that in order for this revolution to succeed, many brilliant, beautiful, and brave human beings will give up their futures for someone else’s. We must acknowledge their suffering, their fears, and most of all, the lives they won’t get to live. We must also acknowledge the people they leave behind and the pain those who will survive will carry with them. This is what it means to resist and to revolt. It means that one group will sacrifice their plans, their potential, and all their normal mornings so that perhaps, one day soon, the rest of us might revel in freedom.
Neda Toloui-Semnani is an Emmy-winning journalist and the author of They Said They Wanted Revolution: A Memoir of My Parents.
Photo by Nilo Tabrizy
There Have Been 948 Gun Violence Incidents on K-12 Campuses Since Sandy Hook
  December 13, 2022 Dear Meteor readers, Today we reflect on the 10-year anniversary of Sandy Hook, which takes place December 14. What have we learned since then, and where do we go from here? We also have some news. Let’s dive right in. Praying for a different way, Samhita Mukhopadhyay  WHAT'S GOING ONTen years ago: On December 14, 2012, an armed gunman entered Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut and killed 26 people—a majority of whom were children under the age of 10. It was the deadliest mass shooting in an elementary school in U.S. history. Afterward, Americans seemed to agree: Sandy Hook needed to be a turning point. Kids should not be gunned down in their own classrooms. Yet in just a four-year span after Sandy Hook, there was Taft Union High School in California. There was Ronald E. McNair Discovery Learning Academy in Georgia. Sparks Middle School in Nevada. Arapahoe High School in Colorado. Berrendo Middle School in New Mexico. North Thurston High School in Washington. South Macon Elementary in North Carolina. Harrisburg High School in South Dakota. Madison High School in Ohio. Antigo High School in Wisconsin. Mueller Park Junior High School in Utah. All incidents in which teenagers were either wounded or killed. And these incidents aren’t flukes. Over the ten years since Sandy Hook, incidents of school-based gun violence have increased at an alarming rate. According to the Center for Homeland Defense and Security K-12 Shooting Database, 948 gun violence incidents have taken place on K-12 campuses since December 2012. “Gun violence incidents” include any incident where a gun is “brandished, fired, [or] a bullet hits school property for any reason regardless of the number of victims, time of day, or day of week.” As a result, 273 people have been killed, 722 have been wounded, and thousands have been traumatized by witnessing gun violence at school.  For the parents of Sandy Hook, the trauma of their loss was compounded by a new 21st-century ordeal: a mass disinformation campaign that sought to invalidate their experience. Alt-right radio host and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones relentlessly spread lies claiming the shooting was a hoax. He called the parents “actors” and told his audience (who believed him) that Sandy Hook was a staged event intended to remove guns from the hands of law-abiding citizens. Courts ultimately found Jones guilty of defamation and ordered him to pay $965 million in damages to eight of the families. This reckoning wouldn’t have happened without the efforts of Sandy Hook families who, in the wake of this tragedy, refused to be silent about the twin plagues of gun violence and disinformation. As for the direction we’re headed with gun violence: This year saw another series of incomprehensible mass shootings, including the murder of 19 children and two adults at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. Like Sandy Hook, Uvalde was heralded as a turning point—and many gun reform advocates believe the turning is actually beginning to happen. In June, the Senate was able to reach a deal on gun reform that, while not banning assault rifles outright, did begin to limit who can access them. But as National Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman said, “It takes a monster to kill children. But to watch monsters kill children again and again and do nothing isn’t just insanity—it’s inhumanity.” For the sake of the families of Sandy Hook, let’s not allow this anniversary to be an occasion where we simply mourn the murder of children as an inevitable part of American life. If you take one small action today to protect children from gun violence, consider a donation to Sandy Hook Promise, which works to end violence nationwide through education, gun reform, and (most crucially) a “Know the Signs” program geared toward caring for students who exhibit violent inclinations. Let’s fight for a better future—together.  AND:
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My Pregnancy vs. the State of Texas
FEATURED STORY
“The loss of my daughter was inevitable. What happened next was not.”
BY AMANDA ZURAWSKI
I was 18 weeks pregnant when I knew something was wrong. My body was leaking thick and yellowish discharge, and my pelvis felt what I could only describe as abnormally “open.”
A shockingly brief examination later, I was diagnosed with an “incompetent cervix”—a condition in which the cervix prematurely dilates, usually during the second trimester of pregnancy and often leading to premature birth.
The loss of my daughter, I was told, was inevitable. What happened next was not.
It was evident from the moment my doctor saw my bulging amniotic sac that this was not a question of if I would lose my baby—the baby my husband and I wanted so badly and had worked for 18 months with the help of science and medicine to conceive. It was a question of when.
If we had conceived the previous year when we began our journey with infertility, or if we lived in a different state, my healthcare team would have been able to treat me immediately and end my doomed pregnancy as soon as possible, without risk to my life or my health. I wouldn’t have had to wait in anguish for days for the inescapable ill fate that awaited. But this was August 23, 2022, in the state of Texas, where abortion is illegal unless the pregnant person is facing “a life-threatening physical condition aggravated by, caused by, or arising from a pregnancy.” Somehow, any medical help to make the horrific inevitability of losing my beloved child 22 weeks early less difficult qualified as an illegal abortion.
My doctor outlined the roadmap in no uncertain terms: I could wait however long it took to go into labor naturally, if I did at all, knowing that my baby would be stillborn or pass away soon after; I could wait for my baby’s heartbeat to stop, and then we could end the pregnancy; or—most alarmingly—I could develop an infection and become so sick that my life would become endangered. Not until one of those things happened would a single medical professional in the state of Texas legally be allowed to act. It was a waiting game, the most horrific version of a staring contest: Whose life would end first? Mine, or my daughter’s?
I knew I was going to lose my baby. And I knew it could be days—or weeks—of living with paralyzing agony before we could move forward.
People have asked why we didn’t get on a plane or in our car to go to a state where the laws aren’t so restrictive. But we live in the middle of Texas, and the nearest “sanctuary” state is at least an 8-hour drive. Developing sepsis—which can kill quickly—in a car in the middle of the West Texas desert, or 30,000 feet above the ground, is a death sentence, and it’s not a choice we should have had to even consider. But we did, albeit briefly.
Instead, it took three days at home until I became sick “enough” that the ethics board at our hospital agreed we could legally begin medical treatment; three days until my life was considered at-risk “enough” for the inevitable premature delivery of my daughter to be performed; three days until the doctors, nurses, and other healthcare professionals were allowed to do their jobs.
By the time I was permitted to deliver, a rapidly spreading infection had already claimed my daughter’s life and was in the process of claiming mine.
I developed a raging fever and dangerously low blood pressure and was rushed to the ICU with sepsis. Tests found both my blood and my placenta teeming with bacteria that had multiplied, probably as a result of the wait. I would stay in the ICU for three more days as medical professionals battled to save my life.
Friends visited every night. Family flew in from across the country. I didn’t realize until nearly a month later that my doctors, nurses, and loved ones feared I was going to die.
We still don’t know the extent of damage the wait or the infection had on my body. I’m facing months of procedures and tests to know whether my eggs or my reproductive system were permanently harmed. In fact, later this week I’m having surgery to remove the massive amount of scar tissue plaguing my uterus as a result of the infections. We don’t know yet whether the baby we want more than anything will ever be possible.
Everything that happened after my cervix dilated was avoidable, and it never should have happened. What’s worse is I’m not the only one. This will happen to many women—of all races, all ethnicities, all ages, all across the country—if we don’t fight back.
When the six-week abortion ban in Texas passed last year and Roe vs. Wade was overturned this year, I was furious. But as someone who was then desperately trying everything I could to have a child, I never imagined it would impact me personally. I didn’t realize then the extent to which these laws would truly restrict a woman’s right to make the right decisions for herself, her body, and her future children. I didn’t realize the laws I was angry about would soon prevent me from safe access to healthcare. I didn’t realize these laws would directly prevent doctors from being able to protect their patients in so many ways.
But it’s not just me, and it’s not just Texas. As more states pass similar laws—let alone if members of Congress enact a federal ban on abortion—my story will become the norm. The number of people who will be hurt will be too much to bear, and we have to do something to stop it.
Being angry isn’t enough. To enact change, we must vote and make sure our elected officials know that this is not okay and we will not allow it.
We named our daughter Willow—after the tree that’s known for its ability to withstand adversity and fight against harsh conditions. With our Willow, we’ll show our strength and we will fight.
Amanda Zurawski lives in Texas with her husband, Josh, whom she met in preschool in their home state of Indiana, and their dogs Paisley and Millie.
Stay tuned for more United States of Abortion Stories. And read more here about the medical facts in Amanda’s case.
For abortion access resources and to create a voting plan for the 2022 midterm elections, visit iwillharness.com/abortion.
Video Credits
Director: Amy Elliott
Editor: Ellen Callaghan
DP: Pat Blackard
Camera: Tony Lopez
Audio: Chris Kupeli
Field producer: Karen Bernstein
Music: “Come On Doom, Let’s Party”
Written and performed by Emily Wells
Courtesy of Thesis & Instinct
By arrangement with Terrorbird Media
This film is a project of The Meteor Fund, and produced in partnership with Harness; with support from Pop Culture Collaborative.
Emily Ladau: Disability is part of the human experience
I was born in 1991—just a year after the Americans with Disabilities Act became law—with a genetic joint and muscle disorder called Larsen syndrome. My mom has it, too. My disability has always been part of my life—a natural state of being.
As the only kid with an apparent disability in my elementary school, I learned quickly what it meant to exist in a body that’s considered “wrong.” I’d often shy away from talking about my disability, and the biggest compliment you could pay me was that you didn't think of me as disabled.
But at age 10, I found myself heading in the complete opposite direction, beginning to embrace myself and opening up about my experience as a disabled person in a very public way: by appearing on “Sesame Street.” Hanging out with Big Bird, Elmo, and Oscar the Grouch was a whole lot of fun, but the best part was beginning to find my voice as an advocate. The experience of educating about disability on a national platform showed me the power of storytelling and communicating as a way to break down stigma and debunk stereotypes.
Though I’d planned to become a high school English teacher, the sparks of disability advocacy that started when I was young began to turn into flames. Midway through college, my plans began to shift as I realized that I wanted to pursue advocacy as a career. So, a week after graduation, I went to Washington, DC, to complete an internship program led by the American Association of People with Disabilities. But I gained so much more than work experience. I gained an understanding of disability as an identity and a sense of belonging to something so much bigger than just me. In finding the disability community, I began to find myself.
As my passion for activism grew, so too did my realization that if we want the world to be accessible to the disability community, we must make disability accessible to the world. That's not to say I believe disabled people exist simply to be teachable moments, but rather that I believe in meeting people where they're at in a world where disability remains so unfamiliar to so many.
But the disability experience isn’t just my story, or my mom’s story, or any one person’s story. It’s the story of one billion people around the world. And for so many of us, our stories are steeped in ableism, in a lack of acceptance of who we are. My hope is that my new book Demystifying Disability: What to Know, What to Say, and How to Be an Ally, will help to shift the paradigm to a more inclusive world.
To do this, we first need to understand and recognize ableism and how it manifests in the world.
SO WHAT IS ABLEISM?
Ableism is discrimination and prejudice against people with disabilities, though that’s not quite enough to convey its full weight. So here’s the definition I use. “Ableism is attitudes, actions, and circumstances that devalue people because they are disabled or perceived as having a disability.”
To most of society, ableist beliefs and behavior don’t raise any red flags because they’re woven into the fabric of everyday life, simply accepted as the norm. For disabled people, though, ableism is always there—a part of our lives that never disappears, manifesting in endless forms ranging from broad, systemic discrimination to individual interactions.
HIDDEN DISCRIMINATION EVERYWHERE
Here’s an example. Less than 25 percent of New York City subway stations have elevators. This qualifies as systemic ableism, because the lack of accessibility limits the freedom of disabled people to get around. I do occasionally brave the subway, but it’s not uncommon for me to be the only wheelchair user on the platform. Strangers will express surprise, making individual ableist comments such as, “Wow, it’s amazing how you get around in that chair.” Of course, if every subway station had an elevator, it wouldn’t be considered anything special to see wheelchair users on the train. But many people operate on the assumption that disabled people don’t have full lives that might require public transportation. And if this assumption weren’t embedded in society’s thinking, making sure every subway station has an elevator would be more of a priority. See what I mean? Ableist assumptions lead to systemic ableism, which lead to further discrimination.
Think about it. There are still laws on the books that explicitly discriminate against disabled people. The nearly century-old Fair Labor Standards Act was created to be supposedly “fair” for everyone, but people with disabilities are the only population, as named in the law, who can legally be paid far less than the minimum wage. Even worse, this happens in segregated work environments known as “sheltered workshops” where disabled people are paid a few cents per hour to do repetitive tasks—the same tasks that nondisabled people would be paid at least minimum wage to complete in a regular workplace.
Advocates in favor of sheltered workshops and subminimum wages argue that such things are necessary because the disabled people who work in these conditions would otherwise have no job prospects. Organizations that run sheltered workshops (like Goodwill—sorry, thrifters) think they’re doing a good deed while getting a good deal on labor. But pennies for piecework isn’t acceptable just because the workers are disabled. It’s ableist. Instead of having such low expectations for disabled people, what if we finally left the past behind and demanded fair pay and inclusive workplaces for all?
THE WORLD I WANT
Fighting back against ableism in its many iterations feels like playing a never-ending game of whack-a-mole. Most of the time it’s nondisabled people who take issue with my anti-ableism advocacy. If I speak up about a place that I can’t get into because I use a wheelchair, I’m called a complainer. If I mention that a line in a play I’ve just seen was, in my opinion, ableist, I’m told I’m overthinking things. If I think that a news story about a disabled person overcoming an obstacle is condescending and then comment on it, I’m accused of being bitter and coldhearted. But it’s not bitterness that drives me; it’s my passion to move toward a more accepting, loving, equitable world.
If you’re just starting the journey of figuring out accessibility, there will be a learning curve. After all, accessibility can take many different forms—handrails to hold on to in a bathroom; transcripts for a video or podcast; a website that can be navigated with software that reads text on the screen; using plain, clear language in a document. But I promise it’s not that complicated. A good first step is to do some research: Two of my go-to resources for finding answers are the ADA National Network and the Job Accommodation Network (JAN).
If you’ve been ableist, I don’t want you to feel dismissed for that out of hand. I agree with filmmaker, consultant, and streamer Dominick Evans, who tweeted about ableism: “It’s embedded in our culture, and I had to learn to be better, so how can I expect nondisabled people to know how to be better? What gets me is when people learn the harm they’ve caused, and double down about it.”
I believe that you can do better. We all can.
Emily Ladau is a disability rights activist, writer, and speaker. She is the editor in chief of Rooted in Rights and co host of “The Accessible Stall" podcast and her writing has appeared in The New York Times and HuffPost. A founding member of The Meteor collective, her new book, Demystifying Disability: What to Know, What to Say, and How to Be an Ally, is out now.
Excerpt from DEMYSTIFYING DISABILITY: What to Know, What to Say, and How to Be an Ally.
Copyright © 2021 by Emily Ladau.
Published by Ten Speed Press, an imprint of Penguin Random House.
Illustrations by Bianca Alvarez
Mariane Pearl: Behind my ballot
Journalist Mariane Pearl can claim four nationalities—but the US is the one country she chose freely. Here's the intensely personal story of her American vote.
Photo illustrations by Debbie Millman
In June 2009, I was naturalized as an American. That day, on my last trip to Garden City, New York, to the now-defunct United States Citizenship and Immigration Services office, I spring-walked by billboards shooting their messages to the heavens. Becoming American felt like an accomplishment for me, a chance to review the ideals I held in a new light and commit to them. It felt like hope, a lifting in my chest, an aspiration to love a new country. This was the interview, the fifth and last test in the naturalization process. Sitting next to me were a man from India in a brown suit and a pale pink tie, and a young woman from Colombia with tiny sunsets on each of her nails. All three of us were about to become citizens of America—to raise our right hands, so help us God.
Eleven years in, it still means everything to me to be part of the only nation on earth that so thoroughly weaves all 194 other countries into its fabric. And in 2020, as I fill out my ballot from an ocean away, I feel more than ever before as if I am sending my heart by express mail.
America was the first nationality I actually chose, but it was my fourth overall. I was born in France, to a Cuban mother and Dutch father, and I look like everyone’s idea of an immigrant. Parisians take me for North African; Americans for Latina; and I certainly don’t look Dutch to the Dutch.
I realized the complexities of otherness early on. At nine, I went with my family to visit a Cuban friend of my mom’s in Algeria. I discovered then that North Africans were not only the grocery-store owners on our street, but a vast assortment of people, with languages and governments and cities. I was mesmerized and ashamed. Until then I’d been child enough to think that everyone had poor black relatives from Cuba and a rich white family from Holland. It was terrifying to realize the extent of my ignorance.
Back in France, where I was often assumed to be Arab, I sensed how tricky life was for Muslim girls there, tiptoeing their way between the expectations of dueling cultures. But when people found out I was half-Cuban, the generally hostile immigration mood turned to good-humored nostalgia. Was it true, people asked, that women who work in cigar factories roll tobacco leaves on their sweaty bare legs while listening to Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables read aloud? The sheer arbitrariness of xenophobia sent my head spinning.
At our rented flat in the XIXth arrondissement in Paris, there was a small manicured lawn outside with a few deserted benches. The grass was off limits, as were ball games, dogs, music and expressions of enthusiasm. We moved in when I was six; my father was still alive then and the flat was rented to him: a white-as-clay Dutch mathematician and Holocaust survivor with somber green eyes, a scientist who had brought a colorful family back, like pinned butterflies, from Cuba, where he’d been one of the first crew of foreigners drawn by the revolution.
By the time I knew him, my father was defeated, disillusioned by Cuba’s turn to dictatorship; he had given up hope in politics. He only emerged after dark. He liked our house motionless, undisturbed by the whistle of the dishwasher or the soundtrack of TV; my brother and I asleep and our voices quiet. And every night he turned more into a ghost, a negative version of himself. He died by suicide on a warm and lonely Sunday afternoon in Paris in August of 1976.
After he died, we stayed on in that building, though on a different floor and in a smaller flat in which rent was a monthly struggle for my unemployed, widowed mother. Yet our new flat on the first floor was life itself. There was laughter and loud conversations; the light in our one-bedroom home that sometimes slept eight was the last in the building to go off at night.
Until things became more complicated. As we grew up, my brother started walking the tightrope of identity and belonging, and struggled to find himself in French society. His last name is as Dutch as it gets, but his face said North Africa. I saw him come home with his head bleeding so much he could open neither his mouth or eyes; he’d had a short conversation with two girls who happened to be dating white supremacists with bats. Or he would arrive deflated from another humiliating job interview after a man expecting an Aryan-looking candidate found my brother instead.
Before his death, my father had asked me to accomplish what he had failed at. Those were literally his words: “Promise to accomplish everything I failed at.” I was nine. The meaning eluded me at the time, and I had nothing to hold onto from him—besides my name, which I knew he had chosen for its significance: a reference to Marianne, France’s national emblem, representing democracy and resistance to oppression since the birth of the republic on July 14, 1789, when starving people had taken over the lavish kingdom. My name felt like a message from my father, and as a teen, I took it seriously, and became a secret patriot. (Secret, because everyone I knew shared a cynical distrust of anything political.) But in the privacy of my mind, I aspired to my namesake’s democratic values. In one painting by Delacroix, Marianne stands on corpses, leading the way for the insurgents, her country dress ripped off by the claws of injustice, but with her light intact. The reality of France never quite measured up, but may we French continue to search for her.
By the time I added America to my little melting pot of a life, I had married (and lost) one American, and given birth to another.
I met my husband Danny while working as a journalist in Paris at RFI, French public radio, where I was hosting a daily show called "The Magazine of Migrations." Danny lived in London, but was reporting for The Wall Street Journal in Saudi Arabia about the plight of foreign workers there.
Among some journalists we knew, immigration and related matters were considered the worst possible beat. It meant ducking into tales of lost lives; it meant figuring out who people used to be back when they were the doctors, the nurses, the teachers, heads of their families, pillars of their nations. To me, though, the immigrants I met were modern-day adventurers (some by choice, some not), exploring the human condition. On the show, guests would share what France meant to them. Liberty, Equality and Fraternity actually had meaning to these forced travelers—these ideas meant the difference between life and death. My inner Marianne of the republic was thrilled.
When we got pregnant with our son, Danny and I were living in Mumbai, India, working as journalists. In our enthusiasm for diving into foreign cultures, we had selected a neighborhood where we were the only nonlocals. I’d been going through life as if tolerance was written in my DNA—it was not. We lived in a Jain building, which meant we were to respect every form of life as sacred. Residents walked with bare feet so as not to step on an ant. Meanwhile, right outside our flat, on the sidewalk, lived a family of six, the youngest a little girl I instantly fell in love with. The daily built-in injustice felt unacceptable to me. Every time I walked out of the house, I was forced to confront prejudices I didn’t know I had—over how we as people should live.
So in Asia, Danny and I worked hard at stretching the limits of our own minds. Danny had long asserted his worldliness by choosing a Dutch, Cuban, French, Buddhist girl as his wife. He was a Jewish kid from Los Angeles whose father was born in Israel of Polish origins and mother born in Baghdad. Adam, our son, was conceived in India and traveled to five countries before he was even born. We were in Asia, we hoped, to tell stories that could connect people and help us understand one another.
Then Danny was kidnapped and murdered by Al Qaeda terrorists—men who stood at the opposite end of the values that had cemented our relationship. Men who had trained to drain themselves of every hint of empathy and compassion. Men who kill puppies and other innocent creatures for practice. A generation of lost soldiers from discarded wars.
The night in Karachi when I realized Danny wasn’t coming home, I ran into the bedroom of the posh but soulless house where we had been staying—all beige marble and mirrors—and locked myself in to howl like a wild animal. It was almost Eid al-Fitr, the break of the Muslim holy fast, and I could hear the cries of sheep herded in the neighbors’ yards. I saw then how History leaves its deep, dirty footprint on your soul when you ignore its ripple effects.
Outside my door was an unusual mix of humankind. The people who had helped me try to save Danny were all praying for both of us. Everyone had overcome their limits to try to find him: Cops and journalists had agreed to work together; Pakistani with Americans; men with a pregnant woman. The prayers I heard that day were Jewish and Buddhist and Muslim, Catholic and secular—a litany that felt like the ultimate expression of our shared humanity.
In the days after Danny’s death, I went to visit then-President Musharraf to protect the man who had taken the most personal risks to save my husband: a Pakistani senior police officer who today is one of my son’s honorary godfathers. I listened to President Musharraf speak about how Americans were too arrogant. Then I flew to the U.S. and met with President George W. Bush, who complained to me that Pakistan was not trustworthy. Both heads of state seemingly sincere, and somewhat puzzled by the other’s behavior. I have never felt as lonely as I did that night, six months pregnant, in my hotel room in Washington, D.C.
How were they ever going to understand one another?
Only immigrants, I felt, could achieve such a miracle.
If I hadn’t been so exposed to multiple identities early in life, I might have gleefully sought comfort in hatred after Danny’s death. I understand why people find it reassuring—a single-minded story, bare and righteous, that spares us the existential angst. But blind faith in my own view was not an option for me. Our world has managed to kill hundreds of millions of its own by relying on that perspective.
My father and mother saw that firsthand. One came from the Holocaust, the other from slavery—and they’d seen in Cuba that political systems inevitably fail you. Yet they still clung to a belief in people, ordinary ones, and especially immigrants and seekers as they were. By shifting their trust from politics to the people it is supposed to guide, they saved my soul. And when I sought my U.S. citizenship, years after that meeting with the president, it was not because I believed in the American government, but because I had managed to preserve a genuine and lasting faith in its people.
I still have that faith. As citizens of a country with vastly more immigrants than any other, we Americans have a unique history: Everyone has or had relatives who remember the war, the famine, the sexual or religious persecution, the ethnic cleansing, or the promise of growth that brought their families to the U.S. So we are the good and the ugly together, the oppressors and the oppressed, the terrorists and the freedom fighters, the dreamers, the refugees and the wild west capitalists. But in the U.S. as elsewhere, blood has spilled and is still flowing—that of Native nations, of slaves then and Black people now, asphyxiated or shot to death. This year it flowed anew, with the cries of caged children, the 140-character leadership, the recurring white extremism, George, Breonna, Atatiana, Stephon. It’s for them—and for myself—that I cast my vote this time.
This fall, and as elections loom, I have found myself thinking of a story I did back when I was reporting in Paris. Danny and I had just met, and I was working in the Pigalle neighborhood, next to a small local church that looked more like a store. Home of the famous Moulin Rouge, Pigalle was a hotspot for traffickers, a place that smelled of urine and sex. Every day, I would see people coming and going to that church, a United Nations of lonely people, most ordinary, usually women. They came for Santa Rita, the patron saint of abused people, parents, widows; those who are lonely, hurt, infertile, ill. (You could see why she attracted women.)
Inside the church, the statue of Santa Rita hovered over a large polished copper bowl filled to the rim with small notes folded several times over.
“There it is,” the priest said. “The vote of the voiceless.”
You mean voice of the voiceless? I asked him.
“Actually, I mean both,” he said, smiling.
The priest read a few messages to me. Abused women who wanted out, people fighting sickness and solitude, a transgender person in search of self. The priest was right—by filling the bowl with their most intimate wish, each person was voting for survival. The unwritten stories behind their votes were there too. The perilous clandestine journeys to Europe, the hunger, the cold nights, the lines at the soup kitchen, the violence around sex, the unfathomable past traumas, the betrayals. But gathered here they found a place where someone would listen, even if just a statue. The ballots they cast were for meaning and vision; they wanted a change, and also safety, hope, and justice.
As we all do when we vote. Don’t we come to the ballot with everything we are and everything we’d rather be? With our cultures, our traumas, our aspirations, our definition of home, our understanding of how the world works and how it should be?
Where I currently live, in Barcelona, Spain—yes, another place—people are engaged in the Independence struggle and showcase their support by hanging Catalan flags, yellow with red stripes, from their balconies. I am often asked by my neighbors here which of my countries I would display if I were to choose one. To their sometime surprise, I always say America.
And so, maybe strangely, does my son. Just as my father chose my name for its symbolism, Danny chose our son’s name—Adam, like the first man, a wish for the 21st century to get its act together and allow peaceful coexistence for its global citizens.
He is now 18, and on November 3, will be working as a translator in New York for Spanish-speaking voters who look like him. And like me, he will be voting—with our shared hopes for a country we still believe in.
Photo illustrations by Debbie Millman. Debbie is a writer, designer, educator, artist, brand consultant and host of the podcast "Design Matters." Follow her on Instagram @DebbieMillman
