For the June issue of Rolling Stone, I spent time with the radically anti-fascist, anti-racist & pro-LGBT groups taking up arms to defend marginalized people against the militant far right. “This is the Wild fuckin West, man. We kinda do what we gotta do.”
News: Protesters fighting to defend Atlanta’s forest are determined to keep up the struggle, even after one of their own was killed by police. And they’re not buying the cops’ story of what happened.
realistically if the place that published sexy bikini pics alongside their prestige journalism about the most popular topic in the world can't make it, none of us can
here we go: the massive order of eggs spotted in fox and friends' "breakfast with friends" segment appears multiple times in different shots, in front of different diners, as it was part of a prop plate cooked by diner staff before taping
Local news reporting that police shot and killed one protestor, Georgia State Trooper also shot but in stable condition. Hearing that there's a massive raid ongoing with tactical teams bombarding tree sits with pepper balls, bulldozers in the forest.
Police killed a forest defender today, someone who loved the forest, someone who fought to protect the earth & its inhabitants.
This is why we organize to stop Cop City. And we will. In honor of their life, and the lives of everyone killed and imprisoned by the police.
the u.s. military blatantly lying about the people it's killing in somalia every day is one of the most frustrating and most underreported stories out there right now
Like many readers, the concept of bringing *more* weapons to a tense situation sounds insane to me. But what I found was that many marginalized people already facing explicit violence and intimidation from the far right don't see many other options.
I'd be lying if I said I slept well last night, but a year into the war and central Kyiv is completely quiet. No air raid warnings for hours. Hoping it stays this way, and predictions of an anniversary wave of missiles and drones were overblown, but there's a lot of day left.
@libbycwatson
the entire document is gonna be an absolute minefield for hapless reporters on tv who aren't familiar with the toxic culture he's coming from/ don't understand online
A couple years ago while backpacking
@evanhill
and I watched an incredibly bad Afghanistan movie on my tiny phone screen & thought damn, this should be a podcast: war movies for the 9/11 generation. Well here it is:
@schlockawepod
Ep. 1: AMERICAN SNIPER
honestly i think more magazines should do a swimsuit edition. at this point it can't hurt. get the new yorker to do a like literature babes edition. sally rooney in body paint or something. karl ove knausgard in an open cardigan with a speedo underneath. i'd buy it
For the February issue of Rolling Stone, I spent the fall inside the New York Young Republican Club — a maelstrom of ambition & anger at the heart of the MAGA movement. Along the way: a guy in full plate armor, a sink full of vomit, & Donald Trump himself.
@libbycwatson
there's a lot in there that's blatant trolling -- he has a section about video games where he jokes that he was radicalized by spyro 3/ jokes about flossing in fortnight
Kherson has all the aid it needs. The occupation is over. But the city is still a ghost town, thanks to constant Russian shelling, which strikes at random, with no discernable objective or goal beyond fear. My dispatch from the city for Rolling Stone:
How do you protest the most protected, insulated person on earth? Get as close as you can and start yelling. Inside one arm of the laser-focused anti-war effort to push Biden towards a ceasefire, for
@RollingStone
Activists & lawyers connected to the Defend the Atlanta Forest movement tell me that the escalating charges of domestic terrorism & now racketeering are a grim precedent for the future of protests nationwide -- that won't go unanswered in the streets.
The protesters there call themselves "forest defenders," loosely organized under the banner of
@defendATLforest
. Many of them are camped in the forest year-round, some living in elaborate tree sits like this one, putting their bodies on the line in order to stop construction.
The activists arrested yesterday are reportedly being charged with "domestic terrorism," a loosely defined yet extremely serious charge leveled after cops claim they found gasoline and "explosive devices" in some of the camps.
I wrote an essay about the failings of the "rules of war," what happens when people break them, and about an act of evil larger than almost anything we have seen in decades.
The Nova Kakhova dam's destruction will completely wipe out several of the villages mentioned in this story. Others will be further isolated. Several blocks of kherson city are at risk. Hard to comprehend on top of everything else this region has endured
the thing that fucks me up about all these billionaires running for president is if they actually wanted an altruisitic vanity project to spend a couple million dollars on they could just buy and support a local newspaper
Last week, I spent a day with a Ukrainian NGO driving aid to some of the isolated rural villages in the Kherson region, many of which take hours to reach. This close to the front line, life is tenuous — and always at risk from fresh violence.
the woman in the pic is actually not the grandmother who gave me the banana. i apologize if this misled anyone although she was very nice as well. here is another pic of the dog
Fantastic news:
@vox_union
has overwhelmingly voted to ratify our first CBA with
@voxmediainc
! 🎉
We’re thrilled, and strongly believe this contract is a big step toward creating an even better workplace — here are some of the highlights! ⬇️
My dispatch from Kyiv today, reconnecting with some of the friends I've made during the war and looking forward to what happens next after a year loss.
i think part of the reason that the US struggles to score goals is they no longer have any visibly balding players, which is a very early indicator of scoring instinct
I took a picture of a guy in a reflective vest calmly sweeping a gutter -- Kharkiv's streets are obsessively clean -- hours after the first bombs had started falling. The metro stations were all staffed, every stall open.
My sources say police destroyed this structure, and several others that served as either food prep or public space inside of the forest. When activists tried to hold a press conference at the ICP trailhead, police blocked road access in or out.
it feels cliche at this point to talk about the hospitality of people suffering through horrible things but then again the only nurse in a town covered in shell craters insisted that i take a banana today. i think that's both poignant and concerning re: my potassium intake
The forest defenders' fight is not always peaceful. But there is often a significant difference between the reality on the ground and the actions law enforcement claims protesters have engaged in, and the majority of defenders I saw were engaged in nonviolent protest.
@lizzieohreally
i don't watch BLL but it seems like there's a Universal TV Temperature, where you can wear a tasteful amount of layers no matter the season and never sweat or shiver
At the trailhead to Intrenchment Creek Park, public land now under a disputed claim by a film studio seeking to develop it, protesters had recently set up a community kitchen handing out free meals, & regularly led walking tours & other outreach.
interesting counter-narrative forming re: the shooting this morning -- protestors allege the officer who was shot was hit by friendly fire. so far no evidence that the killed protestor fired first (or at all) besides the cops' hearsay.
Forest defenders on the ground say they heard a round of ~12 shots fired all at once around 9:04 a.m. this morning. This contradicts the back-and-forth shooting story pushed by police.
1/2
@defendATLforest
On Tuesday and Wednesday, Atlanta Police and DeKalb County Sheriffs, which split jurisdiction of the forest, have been sweeping the area, destroying camp infrastructure and reportedly bombarding some activists in tree sits with tear gas & pepper balls.
RIGHT NOW: Police threaten environmental protestors.
"Occupants of the treehouse, this is Dekalb county police department. You are under arrest. The only way we can assure your safety is if you exit the treehouse now."
#AllEyesOnWeelaunee
#SaveWeelaunee
They also made arrests, detaining several tree-sitters at the DeKalb County Jail. A former detainee told me it was the "worst place I've ever been to," w/ mold in the food & walls & cells flooded with waste water. Activists protested the arrests yesterday:
The first days of the war were utterly bizarre. The curfews & confusion meant you couldn't really do much reporting, but we tried to go out on the streets when possible. I wrote this on the 25th, figuring all I could do was explain how it felt:
When we got to the Palace hotel the lobby was filled with this weird kind of quiet frenzy -- no one raising their voices but everyone bustling around trying to figure out what to do. I had no idea so I just sat down and wrote my first dispatch of the war:
What was surreal about the first hours of the war is that even in Kharkiv right on the Russian border, everything felt surreally normal. We took the metro one stop to the hotel; half the people on it were commuting to work as usual. The other half were fleeing.
When I was there in March, there were rumors that Russian forces -- which were still regularly shelling the city and Ukrainian-controlled banks -- were pulling some of their larger units back from the waterfront. At the time it didn't seem particularly significant but now... man
This time last year I had just arrived at the Kharkiv Palace hotel with
@jacklosh
, after ditching a 7th-floor airbnb for slightly safer lodgings after the first missiles struck. We were there -- mostly locked down by a citywide curfew -- for the next four days.
Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, predictably, is leaning hard into the conception of the activists as domestic terrorists, in line with other strict crackdowns on ecological justice movements.
Today 5 people were charged with a variety of crimes including domestic terrorism.
Gov. Brian Kemp called it "bringing domestic terrorists to justice in Georgia" and "a strong reminder of that to anyone threatening our communities."
if you're a part-time or contract worker laid of at nymag please email or dm me. i'm also part time and i want to hear from you in particular jcrosbie
@splinternews
.com
this is really well written and i think the best possible form telling this story could have taken. the section where
@annamerlan
writes honestly about why she didn't do the story until now but why it ultimately needed to be done is really important imo
@evanhill
@schlockawepod
In the time since that trip, we've watched some really dumb films: the Michael Bay Benghazi movie, things of that nature. But for Ep. 1 it felt right to start with American Sniper, the best example of pure American fantasy about the Global War on Terror
steve quietly built a really interesting and fun features section at digg that got less buzz than it deserved and paid better than it had any right to and someone should hire him so he can have health insurance and publish his writing so he can have money in the mean time. thanks
Some encouraging words from a few western volunteers doing evacs in the region: they're way less busy than they thought, as the Ukrainian military/ civil service seem to be really on top of evacuations and aid. Much less panic than those of us watching online expected last night
my lyft driver has insanely powerful eastern european energy... benz g wagon with massive seat cover/ cushion, mix of smooth jazz and drum and bass blaring at full volume, simultaneously smoking a cigarette and chugging red bull
the full archive is over 2,000 photos.
@hamiltonnolan
got them from the SPLC and today is publishing far, far more than the times deigned to, because, in his words, they are "both repulsive and newsworthy." they are, and they should be seen.
i don't think billionaire ownership is an ideal model for local news but if tom steyer wanted to put literally a tiny fraction of his net worth into the youngstown vindicator it'd probably be a net good for society
since june 2017, the u.s. military has conducted more than 110 airstrikes in somalia and killed more than 800 people. until today AFRICOM insisted that not a single one of those 800 people was a civilian. today it admits that two—two!—of them were:
i have a second family in georgia now... his son is also 28 and lives in tbilisi, i’m to call him immeditely if i ever visit. he was wearing lacoste slides that matched his shirt... truly incredible, 5 stars, hefty tip, i’ll be seeing you again erekle
@mekosoff
a few months ago i put my phone in the pocket of my gym shorts and it repeatedly thigh-dialed/facetimed someone i hooked up with in college but haven't spoken to in at least 7 years. i sent a frantic text apologizing profusely and never received a response
Last week I had the bizarre experience of revisiting one of my favorite pieces of journalism and realizing, definitively, that it was partially made up
i'm opening commissions for tattoos again! details on how to commission & general pricing here (pix are of some past commissions & an old flash sheet of mine)
this is a really detailed story by
@charliearchy
about the intercept’s precarious financial situation. it’s really frustrating to see good journalists get laid off from a place with such drastic pay disparity
For
@AirMailWeekly
, some reflections on expensive drinks, good water pressure, and occasionally war criminals at the breakfast buffet. With thanks to
@clarissaward
and
@ChristopherJM
for their memories:
several presidential candidates are running with broad "more gun control" platforms, but that alone isn't enough. i wrote about why the smaller battles playing out in states and cities are just as important as sweeping federal reform, and vice versa
in fifa 19 shakhtar donetsk is known as "shakhtar" only, dropping the donetsk, yet they still play home matches in the donbass arena in, which has been closed since 2014 because it has artillery holes in it, suggesting that the war in ukraine may not exist in the EA universe
@WGAEast
Permalance to staff: All current W-2 permalancers will become full-time staff. Future W-2 permalancers will have a choice to join the staff after 12 months.
For today's issue of
@AirMailWeekly
, I wrote a short profile of Jim Harkins, perhaps New York City's highest-profile and hardest-working private investigator -- who's now popped up as a key member of Sam Bankman-Fried's defense team..