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Steven W. Thrasher is finishing The Overseer Class

@thrasherxy.bsky.social

18K followers 530 following 2.3K posts

Pulitzer Center Global Reporting Fellow. Fund for Investigative Journalism Fellow. Traveling the world writing on Palestine, HIV/AIDS & LGBTQ life. Author of THE VIRAL UNDERCLASS (Celadon/Macmillan). Finishing THE OVERSEER CLASS (Amistad/HarperCollins)

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Steven W. Thrasher is finishing The Overseer Class @thrasherxy.bsky.social · Jun 17

New from me and Afeef Nessouli in @theintercept: we report from inside the Yarmouk refugee camp, where Palestinian refugees see little hope in the new Syria theintercept.com/2025/06/17/p...

Palestinian Refugees in Syria See Little Hope — Even After Assad

“Even if they rebuild all of Syria, Yarmouk will remain destroyed,” said one Palestinian refugee.

theintercept.com

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

Seals, penguins, history, prison…it was quite a day

Steven W. Thrasher is finishing The Overseer Class @thrasherxy.bsky.social · 9m

YOUR life? It’s been around the entire life of the country! It’s named for founding father Elbridge Gerry!!! en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elbridg...

Elbridge Gerry - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Steven W. Thrasher is finishing The Overseer Class @thrasherxy.bsky.social · 15m

In the wild…in a prison 😭

Steven W. Thrasher is finishing The Overseer Class @thrasherxy.bsky.social · 21m

A great place to be a penguin…no predators, and a great view

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Steven W. Thrasher is finishing The Overseer Class @thrasherxy.bsky.social · 34m

@siddharthamitter.bsky.social

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

Re Olivia Nuzzi “slut shaming”: journalism is a whites only game, it gets whiter every day, and it’s amazing how poorly one can act as a white journalist (critiquing sexting w a source is NOT “slut shaming”) and fall up. Meanwhile, every nonwhite LGBTQ journo is told “Need Not Apply”

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

I wondered if there were any women prisoners — only one, Krotoa, in the 17th century

KROTOA
(Igoa/gõas, Eva)
c1643 - 29 July 1674
Igoa/gõas, Krotoa or Kroket in Dutch, Christian name Eva, was a Khoekhoen translator who worked for the Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie (Dutch East India Company) from 1652 when the settlement at the Cape of Good Hope, present day Cape Town, was established. Initially a resident on Robben Island, in 1668 she was unjustly convicted for immoral behaviour and imprisoned here until her death.
Krotoa was the first and last female prisoner on Robben Island.

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Steven W. Thrasher is finishing The Overseer Class @thrasherxy.bsky.social · 4h

The yard where he and others were allowed 1 hour a day. They had to put their mats out their windows in the daytime, so they’d have nowhere to sit
or lie down

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Steven W. Thrasher is finishing The Overseer Class @thrasherxy.bsky.social · 5h

Mandela’s cell where he spent 18 years

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Reposted by Steven W. Thrasher is finishing The Overseer Class

Melissa Gira Grant @melissagiragrant.com · 7h

All I can add to the “we reject universal masking” discourse is that it’s not about masks. You aren’t rejecting universal masking, which never happened; you’re rejecting having to think about wearing a mask, and maybe feeling badly about thinking about masks. Can’t help you there.

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Steven W. Thrasher is finishing The Overseer Class @thrasherxy.bsky.social · 6h

Our guide, Derek, was arrested for “espionage” in 1985. He served 5 years of a 7 year sentence.

Steven W. Thrasher is finishing The Overseer Class @thrasherxy.bsky.social · 6h

PENGUINS!

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Steven W. Thrasher is finishing The Overseer Class @thrasherxy.bsky.social · 7h

He went senile from 6 years of talking to no one. Was released to house arrest and died in 1978; Andrew Young adopted his orphans and raised them in America, connecting SA and USA racial justice mvmts

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Steven W. Thrasher is finishing The Overseer Class @thrasherxy.bsky.social · 7h

Learning about Robert Sobukwe, who was kept in solitary for six years…a founding member of the Pan Africanist Congress. He fought against “pass laws”

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Steven W. Thrasher is finishing The Overseer Class @thrasherxy.bsky.social · 7h

Leaders were made to work the lime quarry, which made them blind and have lung problems. The guards didn’t want the leaders influencing other prisoners…but they were altogether and planned the future of the country together. The toilet cave was called “the first democratic parliament chamber”

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Steven W. Thrasher is finishing The Overseer Class @thrasherxy.bsky.social · 7h

(I wrote about these Guantanamo origins in TVU, excerpted in Rolling Stone) www.rollingstone.com/culture/cult...

The Shameful and Forgotten Origin of Guantanamo Bay

In an excerpt from his new book, "Viral Underclass," preeminent LGBTQ scholar, social critic, and journalist Steven W. Thrasher documents the founding of Gitmo, a campaign of forced sterilization, and...

www.rollingstone.com

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Steven W. Thrasher is finishing The Overseer Class @thrasherxy.bsky.social · 7h

Most fascinating to me, from 1846 to 1931 Robben Island (seal island) was a LEPER COLONY. Much as Guantanamo was an HIV segregation colony, Robben Island segregated ppl by disease long before it segregated political prisoners!

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Steven W. Thrasher is finishing The Overseer Class @thrasherxy.bsky.social · 7h

(This is my third former prison/apartheid museum I have visited in SA. The strangest was the Apartheid museum in Joburg, which sold this in its gift shop. Who would buy this??? “The grotesque” @siddharthamitter.bsky.social)

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Steven W. Thrasher is finishing The Overseer Class @thrasherxy.bsky.social · 7h

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Steven W. Thrasher is finishing The Overseer Class @thrasherxy.bsky.social · 7h

There is Disneyland quality to how curated all of this is. We are on a bus. The guide says “after you are with me, you will go to prison.”

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Steven W. Thrasher is finishing The Overseer Class @thrasherxy.bsky.social · 7h

And suddenly, right before everyone heaved, we slowed to a crawl and were in the bay

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Steven W. Thrasher is finishing The Overseer Class @thrasherxy.bsky.social · 8h

Ok, this is amongst the most intense boat rides I have ever been on in a vessel so relatively slow…like the water is higher than the deck most of the time and we are just cutting thru it?

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Steven W. Thrasher is finishing The Overseer Class @thrasherxy.bsky.social · 8h

Cape Town is truly one of the most physically beautiful places I have been on earth

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Steven W. Thrasher is finishing The Overseer Class @thrasherxy.bsky.social · 8h

Our ride

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Steven W. Thrasher is finishing The Overseer Class @thrasherxy.bsky.social · 8h

the other is that I feel teary thinking about my dad. He never left the US but his teaching and activism fighting SA apartheid from 10,000 miles away was my first experience of activism. I wrote abt this when Mandela (RIP) died in 2013 in BuzzFeed (RIP) www.buzzfeed.com/steventhrash...

When I Saw Nelson Mandela At The Los Angeles Coliseum With My Dad

My dad toiled away on anti-apartheid campaigns throughout the '80s in California. In 1990, we got to see Nelson Mandela come to town.

www.buzzfeed.com

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