Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Nechesa Achiro

Kathleen Belew @kathleenbelew.bsky.social · 4h

Here's how they did the whistles, which include a pamphlet with code for "Alert: ICE in the area" (beep beep beep) and "ICE detaining an neighbor, please come form a crowd" (beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep) blockclubchicago.org/2025/10/15/h...

Hundreds Pack 'Whistlemania' Events To Fight ICE In Chicago: 'We Have To Stand Up For One Another'

Hundreds of neighbors joined Whistlemania events in seven neighborhoods to assemble whistle kits that alert when immigration agents are nearby.

blockclubchicago.org

4 61 170

Reposted by Nechesa Achiro

Steven W. Thrasher is finishing The Overseer Class @thrasherxy.bsky.social · 1d

What an offensive statement from so-called historians. There have been others who have been chased out of the country. Mohamed Abdou was deported for his teaching about Gaza…and he was a prof AT COLUMBIA! But he was queer, Muslim, brown & untenured. Do only white straight tenured profs get sympathy?

Karl Jacoby @karl-jacoby.bsky.social · 1d

History faculty at Columbia & Barnard decrying the harassment of @mark-bray.bsky.social: "This is the first case in recent memory of a historian who has fled the country after receiving death threats on account of the history that they teach."

3 100 390

Reposted by Nechesa Achiro

Katelyn Boo-urns @katelynburns.com · 2d

For my newsletter today, I wrote about the American police state and how Democrats are going to have to kill it if they have any hope of rebuilding from the authoritarian Trump regime. www.burnsnotice.com/democrats-mu...

Democrats Must Kill Their Inner Cops

Who needs the National Guard when your state troopers are perfectly willing to crack protester skulls all on their own? Listen, Illinois governor JB Pritzker is not perfect, but he's my guy. Or at le...

www.burnsnotice.com

7 200 630

Reposted by Nechesa Achiro

The New Republic @newrepublic.com · 1d

Across the country, airports are refusing to air a video from the Homeland Security chief blaming Democrats for the shutdown. trib.al/tw3Hd3X

Airports Are Pushing Back Against Kristi Noem’s Shutdown Propaganda

Across the country, airports are refusing to air a video from the Homeland Security chief blaming Democrats for the shutdown.

trib.al

120 540 2.8K

Reposted by Nechesa Achiro

Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 1d

"Residents in Chicago and Portland are living in a police state where masked armed forces kidnap who they want to kidnap, where they have to listen to public officials routinely lie about what is happening in their neighborhoods." donmoynihan.substack.com/p/purge-merg...

StrictlyChristo 🇺🇦🌻❌👑 @strictlychristo.bsky.social · 1d

Federal Secret Police and plainclothes ICE agents kidnap multiple people from a neighborhood in Chicago. They then deploy teargas and brutally beat neighbors who come out to express their concern.

27 600 1.5K

Reposted by Nechesa Achiro

Senate Gabe @senategabe.bsky.social · 2d

Our own office had a staff of 5 for our comms team. Schumer's office, if you include the media center, has 30? Probably more?

And they still pay refuse to pay their interns a living wage.

2 7

Reposted by Nechesa Achiro

Senate Gabe @senategabe.bsky.social · 2d

This is such a good piece wow.

Chanda Prescod-Weinstein 🌌 @chanda.blacksky.app · 2d

The faux feminism at work here is exactly the kind of shit that @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social was writing about when he wrote Elite Capture, the essay and book!

www.bostonreview.net/articles/olu...

2 5 21

Reposted by Nechesa Achiro

The Washington Post @washingtonpost.com · 2d

Ramón Méndez Galain helped Uruguay decarbonize its grid in just five years, with 98 percent of its energy coming from renewable sources. He now aims to help at least 50 countries embark on the path to more clean energy.

He got an entire country running on clean energy. Can he do it again?

Ramón Méndez Galain helped Uruguay decarbonize its grid in just five years, with 98 percent of its energy coming from renewable sources.

www.washingtonpost.com

4 51 160

Reposted by Nechesa Achiro

samuel @quilombo.bsky.social · 3d

🚨Eyal Weizman from @forensicarchi.bsky.social: “this aerial image from the 1960s shows that the 'yellow line' of 🇮🇱 redeployment in Gaza is roughly matching with the border of the area's coastal sand dune, leaving Gaza without the majority of its agricultural areas on the fertile soils in the east”.

15 13

Reposted by Nechesa Achiro

southpaw @nycsouthpaw.bsky.social · 3d

The deportation order is based on Vedam’s conviction for murder—a crime he did not actually commit and for which he’s now been wholly exonerated. He entered the US at 9 months old and was a legal permanent resident before his conviction. We are so, so, so far from the light of justice.

Lynn Becker @cmgiulini.bsky.social · 3d

After spending 43 years in prison for a crime he didn't commit, evidence hidden by the prosecution reversed his conviction. Rather than finally enjoying freedom, ICE abducted him for deportation

Depraved.

www.miamiherald.com/news/local/i...

He was wrongfully imprisoned for 43 years. Moments after being released, ICE took him

Subramanyam “Subu” Vedam now faces deportation.

www.miamiherald.com

65 1.7K 4.9K

Reposted by Nechesa Achiro

Scott Horton @robertscotthorton.bsky.social · 4d

Trump said he deserved a cut for brokering the TikTok deal, and at once there was agreement that his son Baron would have a top executive slot... though he hasn't asked for it, and has no apparent qualifications to hold it. This is how Trump 2.0 works. www.telegraph.co.uk/us/news/2025...

Barron Trump tipped for top TikTok job

US president’s 19-year-old son could be appointed to the app’s board

www.telegraph.co.uk

480 1.1K 2.5K

Reposted by Nechesa Achiro

Dara Kerr @darakerr.bsky.social · 3d

Lots of attention on this Marc Benioff article, which is excellent and full of jaw-dropping quotes.

It reminds me of how he was when I did a story for NPR about him secretly buying hundreds of acres of land in rural Hawaii. Things got weird.

www.npr.org/2024/02/28/1...

9 62 140

Nechesa Achiro @nechesaachiro.bsky.social · 3d

I’m a regular working class Harlemite who was scheduled to attend your townhall before you cancelled it. I had a question I wanted you to answer. When are you going to take my question?

Reposted by Nechesa Achiro

Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 4d

Collect a claim from one side, collect a claim from the other, present them both to the reader with an awkward shrug and a "who can say?"

And the photo choice -- Noem's looking down ... on what? The reverse angle showed a small crowd and a quiet street. But can't show that, it's biased to one side!

David Corn @davidcorn.bsky.social · 4d

A classic case of irresponsible both-sidesism from the NYT. The story is that Trump and MAGA propagandists are lying about Portland to incite a conflict, not that there are different views of the matter.

68 430 1.9K

Reposted by Nechesa Achiro

Julia Carrie Wong @joolia.bsky.social · 4d

The promotion of pseudoscience about a supposed “cause” or “cure” of autism and the destruction of special education (and all of public education, really) are part of the same project. It is a fascist attempt to expel certain people from the body politic, based in eugenics.

Sara Partridge, PhD @sarapartridge.bsky.social · 4d

There are reports that the *entire* office of special education at the US Dept of Education has been cut. These hardworking folks ensure kids with disabilities get equal access to a quality education.

America’s children deserve better than this.

6 180 400

Reposted by Nechesa Achiro

Chanda Prescod-Weinstein 🌌 @chanda.blacksky.app · 3d

🧵 regarding the shutdown:

The Democrats aren’t being clear enough about this but we can be: this shutdown is about saving lives.

If we don’t reverse the Medicaid cuts (and the ACA subsidies on insurance bought through the exchanges) that Republicans made this year, people will die.

7 220 670

Reposted by Nechesa Achiro

Josh Fischman @jfischman.bsky.social · Aug 24

Think slavery doesn't matter today? Wrong. Current Congress members whose families owned 16+ enslaved people now have 4 million $ more than members who did not own slaves. Slave owning = 2024 money and influence 🧪 journals.plos.org/plosone/arti...

Slaveholder ancestry and current net worth of members of the United States Congress

Background Whether and how much past slavery affects contemporary social and economic conditions in the United States is an area of active debate. Newly available data on which members of the United S...

journals.plos.org

20 410 810

Nechesa Achiro @nechesaachiro.bsky.social · 4d

12:04pm, a metro north train passed by with the conductor blaring the horn as if there was an emergency. It startled me so much I jumped. Two subsequent trains passed by at 12:05pm and 12:06pm and didn't blow their horn at all. This is also why my nervous system suffers. It’s so random. @mta.info

Nechesa Achiro @nechesaachiro.bsky.social · 4d

11:56pm I think northbound metro north. This train driver just pulled the horn obnoxiously hard for a couple blocks. It’s unhealthy noise pollution to the residents of east harlem.

It’s almost midnight. Why are we hearing horns at all? What’s the accountability for this behavior?

1 1

Reposted by Nechesa Achiro

Kendra "Gloom is My Beat" Pierre-Louis @kendrawrites.com · 4d

I'm going to start calling essays like this "odes to whiteness" because the underlying premise is that they are like this because they don't anticipate any social cost to smelling bad.

This one is v. frustrating because it tries to lump in perfumes with the broader (problematic) beauty industry

I’m turning 50 next year. I rarely wear deodorant anymore. Many women I know have stopped, too. We don’t talk about it, but I catch it in the air — a faint musk of onion, goat, curry, mustard, salt, sage, fennel, ozone, and the muddy wet marrow of the earth itself. I’m kind of obsessed with this collective stink: the animal symphony of skin, of women being women, punk and unfiltered, taking up space with their scent. Raw, unapologetic BO. The more I live among it, the more I see it not as a hygiene failure but as a radical act of self-acceptance. It’s not polite, but it’s honest — and that feels hot. Hotter, even, than anything a Guess ad ever promised.

94 110 1.1K

Nechesa Achiro @nechesaachiro.bsky.social · 4d

11:46pm and a metro north train blared their horn for no reason other than to terrorize the residents of East Harlem. Another train just passed by at 11:48pm and didn't blare their horn.

1 1

Reposted by Nechesa Achiro

Matt Novak @paleofuture.bsky.social · 4d

“For more than three hours, correctional officers can be seen walking past his cell while he lay on the floor in obvious distress.

The jail nurse was not called until a female guard noted he was foaming at the mouth and having seizure-like activity.”

KARE 11 Investigates: Postal worker died after police mistook stroke for drug impairment

Kingsley Bimpong was jailed instead of hospitalized; video shows guards ignored his suffering for hours.

www.kare11.com

10 81 230

Reposted by Nechesa Achiro

Kendra "Gloom is My Beat" Pierre-Louis @kendrawrites.com · 4d

Yes, because NYT is a fascist institution

David Roberts @volts.wtf · 4d

Douthat is laundering hard core white Christian supremacy into the mainstream, with the NYT's blessing.

Max Kennerly @maxkennerly.bsky.social · 4d

Ross Douthat treats this guy like they're having some deep conversation about the relationship of Christianity and the government, but the dude is a garden-variety dull, shallow, hateful, worthless bigot with nothing interesting to say, just endless riffs on "God hates everything/everyone I do."

7 110 540

Reposted by Nechesa Achiro

Imani Gandy Corn 🎃 @angryblacklady.blacksky.app · 5d

Remember how people lost their minds when I said go to a protest but don't rsvp to one

32 280 1K

Reposted by Nechesa Achiro

Maggie Tokuda-Hall @maggietokudahall.bsky.social · 5d

Today my daughter's preschool is holding a farewell assembly for one of her classmates whose mother has no choice but to self deport. The school is hoping it will be joyful in tone, so we might make this less upsetting for this 3 year old.

There's just no words for the uselessness of this cruelty.

18 2.3K 10K