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Steven W. Thrasher is finishing The Overseer Class

@thrasherxy.bsky.social

18K followers 530 following 2.1K 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 · 1h

Deeply honoured to be giving my first talk in South Africa tomorrow, to the Aurum Institute, which does such important work with HIV/AIDS & LGBTQ health. Aurum has been key to my research in South Africa…This knowledge exchange feels like the actual point of research, journalism and education.

JOURNAL
JOURNAL
CLUB IS CPD
ACCREDITED
AURUM SEMINAR
REMOTE PRESENTATION
9 OCTOBER 2025
09:00HRS - 10:00HRS
Title: Pandemic Politics and the Viral Underclass
Dr Steven Thrasher
Chair of Social Justice & Assistant
Professor of Journalism
About the presenter: Dr. Steven W. Thrasher, PhD is the inaugural Daniel Renberg Chair of Social Justice in Reporting at Northwestern University and a faculty member of the Institute of Sexual and Gender Minority Health and Wellbeing in the Feinberg School of Medicine. He is also the author of many articles in the New York Times, Guardian and Scientific American, and of the award-winning book The Viral Underclass: The Human Toll When Inequality and Disease Collide. His presentation will focus on his previous research on the social vectors of disease in the United States, as well as on his current research, in which he is traveling through Europe, Africa and North America to explore how the Trump administration's public health cuts are affecting LGBTQ people and HIV/AIDS around the world.
His presentation will focus on how pandemics such as HIV/AIDS, COVID-19, and monkeypox are driven not only by biological factors but also by social inequalities - including racism, ableism, and the law - and how addressing these underlying social vectors is essential to ending pandemics.
Join the webcast on Microsoft Teams
THE

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

SA makes HIV meds, but USAID was being used to distribute them & proactively get ppl on them (esp in prison, townships, in LGBTQ communities). Ppl fall out of care & viral loads spike, more ppl get HIV & more ppl die. But this takes years (& will take decades to undo).

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Justin Baragona @justinbaragona.bsky.social · 22h

INBOX: The Chicago News Guild joined others in suing ICE for attacking journalists at the Broadview facility.

“Our members have a right, protected by the First Amendment, to do their jobs and report the news. They should not be targeted, injured or arrested for doing their jobs.”

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

People here have died from USAID cuts. But most of the harm is manifesting in losing access to HIV (a slow acting virus), unemployment, depression, increased poverty, food insecurity. These are all lethal but slow acting. (Even when reversible, they can leave lifelong trauma.)

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

I am finding two ways of thinking about this in South Africa

1. USAID cuts immediately closed SA trans clinics, and trans ppl, cut off from gender affirming care, have since died by suicide

2. USAID cuts have cut HIV/AIDS medication access, which takes months or years to manifest in deaths

The Associated Press @apnews.com · 6h

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio insisted “no one has died” as a result of U.S. foreign aid cuts. In Myanmar, the grieving father of a 2-year-old boy who died after their food rations were cut calls such claims a lie.

Starving children screaming for food as US aid cuts unleash devastation and death across Myanmar

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has repeatedly said “no one has died" because of his government’s decision to gut its foreign aid program.

bit.ly

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

Pritzker is full of shit. He asked Illinois residents to take out their phones and record ICE…then his gestapo beat up and arrested people doing just that, including my friend.

Jerry Boyle @jecboyle.bsky.social · 1d

I was Pritzker’s biggest fanboy, so I realize it’s hard to accept his betrayal. It was hard for me, but I saw it with my own eyes.
Please stop gaslighting me about Pritzker. You weren’t there. I was. These are Pritzker’s brown shirts, working fist-in-glove with ICE/CBP.

Pritzker’s brown shirts attacking protesters.

Pritzker’s brown shirts. Dude in military gear is also Pritzker’s.

Note the Illinois State Police patch on the dude in military gear.

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

Top tier cloud game

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Lois Beckett @loisbeckett.bsky.social · 22h

There's plenty of complexity to the story of Ian Roberts, the Black Iowa superintendent arrested by ICE.

But the way the @nytimes.com chose to frame this article is racist and shameful.

www.nytimes.com/2025/10/05/u...

The Superintendent’s Bio Seemed Too Good to Be True. It Was.

www.nytimes.com

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Drop Site @dropsitenews.com · 23h

LIVE NOW: Drop Site’s Sharif Abdel Kouddous is joined by Palestinian-American legal scholar Noura Erakat who briefed the UN Security Council yesterday, one of only two Palestinian women to have done so since Oct 7, 2023.

Live streaming now on X, YouTube, Substack, and Facebook.

Two years of genocide in Gaza

YouTube video by Drop Site News

www.youtube.com

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A.J. Bauer @ajbauer.bsky.social · 1d

It really doesn't make much sense to talk about right-wing media as distinct from legacy or mainstream media at this point.

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Megan Greenwell @greenwell.bsky.social · 22h

Oh hell yeah, free shipping on BAD COMPANY (and every other book!) from the angels at @bookshop.org today and tomorrow!

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Anna Kornbluh @annakornbluh.bsky.social · 2d

free the journalist Alex Colston, free them all www.dropsitenews.com/p/drop-site-...

Drop Site Urges the Immediate Release of Global Sumud Flotilla Participants, Including Drop Site Journalist Alex Colston

All of us at Drop Site News are deeply disturbed by the reports of inhumane and abusive treatment of nonviolent activists and journalists detained by the Israeli military while on board the Global Sum...

www.dropsitenews.com

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

She’s not “queer,” she’s just a mean, conservative lesbian

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

This is not true. For both of my books I have had approval jointly with my publisher. Most authors have at least veto power. Irving certainly does!

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

I appreciate the follow ups. I wrote about a little girl in Oxnard whose mom was abducted. She is being held now a thousand of miles away in Texas while her case is decided, robbing the little girl of her mom before a decision is even made. We need to hear about these stories.

Elise Wang @elisewang.bsky.social · 1d

One of the more incredible stories out of LA this year has been how a taco review blog became the best on-the-ground coverage of ICE raids in the city.

They do a dispatch every day, follow-up on the kidnapped people (which almost no media outlet has done), and fact-check government claims.

Mother Jones @motherjones.com · 1d

@lataco.bsky.social first began as a blog documenting local Mexican cuisine. Now, it’s an essential reporting powerhouse to the city as Trump’s mass deportation plot unfolds.

Check out the latest from our friends at Reveal: tinyurl.com/4cm2bsdr

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

Greetings from reporting on my first labor protest in Africa! The SACCAWU domestic union, South African Democratic Teachers Union (SADTU) & others are protesting labor conditions at Cosatwu house, Section 129 & the closure of my neighborhood Pick N Pay supermarke

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

What a beautiful scene. Solidarity in musical and rhythmic harmony!

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

One thing that hits different: when everyone is Black, the racial dynamics of the police aren’t the same as the US (tho the equipment is the same and US made)

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

Great signs today

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

This is why I am often bored and disinterested in theater — I get to see dance and singing and theatrical expression in my life as a reporter that is so thrilling, anything that happens on a stage seems trite by comparison

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

(I was gifted a hat)

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

The musicality is unlike ANYTHING I have ever seen at any protest in Europe or North America bsky.app/profile/lind...

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

This march brings together a variety of causes, I am told: how Section 129 threatens the right to strike, the working conditions of formal domestic work, the working conditions of informal street vendors, the threat of a store closure (due to organizing) & even, ofc, Palestine

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

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

Greetings from my first labor march in Africa—a strike for fair wages at Cosatu House in Johannesburg!

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