Not Quite Communist

Bay Area Native American Two-Spirits in 2022 San Francisco Pride Parade. Photo: Gabriel Classon via Wikimedia Commons. When Donald Trump issued NSPM-7 in late September 2025, he called it a measure to fight domestic terrorism and organized political violence. On paper, it sounded like a national security document, something to prevent violent extremism. But buried in the language was a dangerous s...

I’ve been staring at Otto Dix’s Mother and Child. It is a haunting thing to look at. The longer you stare, the more it stares back. What we expect from a painting with that title—something tender, something holy—is stripped away. There are no soft halos here, no warm golds or signs of divine promise. Just a mother, hollowed by hunger. A child, limp and gray against her chest. Their faces are drawn...

Edgewater Mutual Aid volunteers packing food before distribution to people in need. Photo: Gerald Farinas. I’m furious. The United States Department of Agriculture has warned that SNAP benefits—what most people know as food stamps—will run down if the government shutdown continues. But here’s what they’re not saying: this didn’t just happen overnight. The food assistance program has been under sie...

The United States has carried out yet another strike in the Caribbean, killing six people aboard a boat accused of carrying drugs near Venezuela. President Trump has touted this as part of his so-called campaign against “narcoterrorists.” But let’s be clear about what this really is—an extrajudicial killing. This latest strike marks at least the twenty-seventh such attack in the region since his a...

I don’t even know if it’s fair to call it an undercurrent anymore. What’s happening inside the Republican Party—the racism, the homophobia, the transphobia, the open embrace of white supremacy—isn’t hiding beneath the surface. It’s a towering tsunami. And it just crashed through Kansas this week. The Kansas Young Republicans, an official arm of the state GOP, has been declared inactive after leake...

Photo: Gage Skidmore via Wikimedia Commons. The Cubs season has come to an end after a tough loss to the Brewers in the NLDS. The final out brought that familiar ache to Chicago fans, the kind that lingers just long enough to remind us why we care so deeply. But Cubs talk hasn’t ended with the close of the series. In fact, it’s taken a far more personal turn, as former Cubs catcher and manager Dav...

Photo: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Public domain. There’s a growing myth in America that the people enforcing immigration laws are heroes keeping us safe. But let’s be honest, becoming an ICE agent isn’t about bravery and it isn’t about public service. It’s about power. It’s about the kind of authority that doesn’t have to answer to anyone. And in too many cases, it’s about people wh...

This week marked National Mental Illness Awareness Week, and I was honored that one of my personal essays was reprinted by the Presbyterian News Service and later shared by newsletters and websites across the country. Alongside that, my pastor and colleague, the Rev. Kristin Hutson, was interviewed for a separate story highlighting how our congregation has become a spiritual home for many resident...

In the quiet of Bailick Park in Midleton, County Cork, nine tall steel feathers rise toward the night sky. Lit from below, they glow with color, their slender forms bending inward as though forming a bowl. This sculpture, called Kindred Spirits , stands as a gift of remembrance and gratitude from the Irish people to the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma. It tells a story that crosses oceans and centuries...

Debbie Brockman taken down by U.S. Customs and Border Patrol. Photo: Screenshot of video from X (formerly Twitter). I’m broadcasting this as ICE vehicles are patrolling my neighborhood at the moment with helicopters buzzing the lakefront condos all morning. It is surreal to be doing this with people who are against the words I’m sharing literally outside my door and windows. Today in the Logan Squ...

The Reichstag fire aftermath on February 27, 1933. The Chancellor of Germany seized authoritarian control of the nation after declaring a national emergency. Photo: Wikimedia Commons. Many political watchers fear that Donald Trump and his adviser Stephen Miller are waiting for what’s called a “Reichstag Fire moment.” The phrase refers to an event in Germany in 1933 when the Reichstag, the German p...

This is a companion podcast. Read my original news article at GoPride.com. Photo: Wikimedia Commons. This week, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in a case that could reshape the legal status of conversion therapy bans across the country. The case out of Colorado, Chiles v. Salazar, asks whether a licensed counselor’s attempt to change a young person’s sexual orientation or gender identity is...

Photo: Public domain. This week marks the anniversary of the Great Chicago Fire of October 8 to 10, 1871, one of the most devastating urban disasters in American history. The inferno destroyed more than three square miles of the city, left nearly 100,000 people homeless, and killed about 300 residents. Yet while the city burned, another kind of fire spread even faster—a fire of blame and prejudice...

A new escalation in the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown arrived in Chicago today as Texas National Guard troops were deployed to the region and staged at a military training facility in Elwood, Illinois. Their arrival marks a major expansion of federal involvement in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations in the city, intensifying fears among residents and civil rights g...

Photo: Wikimedia Commons. There are places on these islands where the wind feels older than memory. Where the air hums as if it carries the heartbeat of generations. When I was young, I thought ghost stories were meant to frighten us. Now I know—they were meant to remind us. They remind us that the land was never empty. That before the sugar fields, before the canneries, before the barracks where...

Filipino cauliflower farmhand near Santa Maria, Calif. in 1937. Photo: Dorothea Lange. October is Filipino American History Month. For many, that means cultural pride: food, dance, music, parades. And yes, those things matter. But Filipino American History Month is also about remembering the parts of our history that were meant to be silenced, the stories that remind us how fragile belonging in Am...

Kahi Hali’a Aloha. Photo: Mapquest. Today, I want to take you back to my homeland, my birthplace. Makemake au e kaʻana like i ka hoʻāno o nā kānaka o laila a me ka moʻolelo e pono ai ʻoe e ʻike —I want to share the sacredness of the people there and a story you should know. When we think of Waikiki today, we imagine a glittering shoreline. Hotels rise high above the sand. Restaurants, shops, and t...

The Evanston Nouveau Rotary Club at Bookends and Beginnings, Evanston, Ill. Photo: Gerald Farinas. This week, beginning October 5, we enter Banned Books Week —a time to honor the freedom to read, the freedom to think, and the freedom to imagine. But we do so in an era where those very freedoms are being pushed back hard. Across the country, parents and political groups are pressing for books to be...

Photo: Oliver Holzbauer via Wikimedia Commons. I wish more people asked what happens to a deportee after they’re sent to a destination country. So I’ll explain here. When a plane touches down in Vietnam carrying deportees from the United States, the scene is often quiet, almost invisible to the larger public. These are people who may have lived most of their lives in the U.S.—people who built fami...

Photo: Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights. When I share resources from the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, I know I am amplifying one of the most successful networks of defense against ICE raids in the country. The Family Support Network hotline, their reporting systems, and their rapid response legal aid have already protected thousands of people in Illinois...

Photo: Mount Rainier National Park via Wikimedia Commons. Today I am watching the political theater around the government shutdown. And I cannot sit quietly while a dangerous lie gains traction. The White House and Congressional Republicans are hammering a message that this shutdown is the fault of Democrats. They are saying that Democrats want to keep funding Medicare, Medicaid, and other benefit...

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth in 2022. Photo: Gage Skidmore via Wikimedia Commons. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth stood before our highest officers and made an announcement that should chill us all. This was not just another speech. This was not business as usual. This was a declaration. “The era of the Department of Defense is over,” he said. “From this moment forward, the only mission of...

President William McKinley, a Manifest Destiny proponent, annexed Hawaii as part of an imperialist agenda. Painting: National Portrait Gallery. When we talk about history, we’re also talking about power—who gets remembered, who gets honored, and who gets erased. I was recently reading about how Boston University debated the changing of a dorm’s name. BU dropped the name Myles Standish Hall —the do...

Instead of going to my regular Advocate doctor this year, I decided to do something different: I booked my flu shot and COVID booster through the Chicago Department of Public Health. With a quick online appointment at the Uptown community health center on Wilson Avenue near Sheridan Road, I wanted to see how easy it really was. Spoiler alert: it was one of the most painless and convenient healthca...

President Manuel Quezon of the Philippine Commonwealth broadcast from Washington to Manila. For the 25 minutes he was on the air, Quezon discussed woman suffrage and urged the 10-year independence program be limited to a shorter period. April 5, 1937. Photo: Library of Congress. When we tell the story of the Holocaust, the names that rise most often are European. Anne Frank in Amsterdam. Schindler...