An independent, ad-free leftist magazine of critical essays, poetry, fiction, and art.
by Shane Burley. There are key flashpoints that define the Trump years. The escalator speech. The “total and complete shutdown.” Charlottesville. But these were not qualitatively dissimilar from the bulk of his Presidential term, during which racism and violence became ubiquitous.
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by KJ Shepherd. The U.S. education system has long wedded itself to an entire industry of standardized social sorting, which leads students to see themselves as a quantifiable commodity from an early age and, eventually, to borrow against their future.
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Protean was honored to feature the work of dozens of talented writers, poets, and artists this year, both in print and online. Here’s a selection of our publications from 2020.
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by Amelia Merrill. Socialism was not a niche part of Keller’s life, but the crux of it. As a member of the Industrial Workers of the World, she called for nationwide workers’ strikes and revolution, bemoaning that her fans and benefactors wanted to sanitize her image.
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Brendan O’Connor: I came to writing about the far right during the occupation of the Malheur Wildlife Refuge in 2016. I was working at Gawker at the time, and there were already people covering the story, so I had to look around for other angles in because I really felt like there’s something very strange going on here.
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by Stephanie Cawley. A machine weaves cloth / so a woman can write / a poem. The machine weaves / so one woman can write
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by ish ibrahim. See Kyoko now, on a white roof with white plaster, pipes like candy canes jutting out, sealed at their base with white plaster. See the pipes spewing mysterious white smoke. There is a blue sky with occasional white clouds.
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by M.K. Anderson. There’s a meme going around based on the old philosophical thought experiment of the trolley problem. Instead of branching trolley tracks—one track with people tied to it, one without, and a man at the switch—it’s just one track with a trolley running over a long line of victims.
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Today we’re sitting down with Sango, a comrade who has been on the frontlines in the battle against police brutality in the ongoing uprising in Nigeria. We dug into the SARS units of Nigeria, discussed the EndSARS movement and began to imagine what a brighter future might look like. You can learn more about The Movement…
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by Isaac Pickell. if black were human / it would be already / if you were breathing / you would be all ready
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