Journalists From The United States

"He has portrayed the remarkable shifting of attitudes toward autism and Asperger's over the past few decades. NeuroTribes is a sweeping and penetrating history of all this, presented with a rare sympathy and sensitivity. It is fascinating reading; it will change how you think of autism, and it belongs alongside the works of Temple Grandin and Clara Claiborne Park, on the bookshelf of anyone interested in autism and the workings of the human brain."

"One of the hardest things about having a child with autism, parents told me, was struggling to maintain hope in the face of dire predictions from doctors, school administrators, and other professionals who were supposed to be on their side. (p 9)"

""The Geek Syndrome," was published in the December issue of Wired in 2001. The world was still reeling from the horror of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, but e-mail started pouring into my inbox even before the magazine officially hit the newsstands. I heard from parents who said that the article helped them feel less isolated from other parents facing the same challenges with their own children; from clinicians who saw the same dynamic at work in their own high-tech communities; and from readers who had been struggling in social situations for most of their lives without knowing why. This flood of responses was both inspiring and humbling...Years passed, and I still got e-mail about "The Geek Syndrome" nearly every week. As time went on, though, I became convinced that by focusing on the dynamics of autism in one highly specialized community, I had missed a larger and more important story. (p 10-12)"

"A wry saying popular in the autistic community, "If you meet one person with autism, you've met one person with autism," turns out to be true even for molecular biologists. (p 14)"

"This country took me and my family in when we were at one of the lowest points of our lives and returned to me a feeling I had lost: that of being safe. I was so proud when I eventually took the oath of citizenship and posed for photos, waving an American flag, in front of the courthouse where I was sworn in."

"I have always been a daughter of two countries, in large part because without America, my adopted country, my native country of Liberia would not exist."

"Sweden avoided World War II, sparing itself the German occupation that Norway endured and the Soviet invasion suffered by the Finns. During the Cold War, Sweden continued its neutral path...[and] declined to join NATO. And then Feb. 24, 2022, happened. The Russian invasion of Ukraine brought into sharp relief the limitations of being in Europe but not having the security guarantees of NATO’s collective defense pact. The Finns — dragging the Swedes with them — applied for membership in the alliance."

"From the moment I read Kim's work the first time, I knew Mother Jones would have loved her...By the time Kim made waves in the labor movement with her piece "Everything You Need to Know about General Strikes," I was hooked...She has a writer's intellectual curiosity and a reporter's nose for the truth, and it shows in this book...While there are many who wish we would forget, Kim's thrilling and incisive look at our history reminds us of a fundamental truth: the labor movement belongs to all of us."

"Fight Like Hell establishes Kim Kelly as a true champion for the working class."

"Kim Kelly has written the most important book on labor published in a generation"

"(How are you feeling about the future of the labor movement?) I am so stoked, man. I am so proud of us, and I’m so certain that we’re going to win. It’s going to take struggle and time, and things aren’t where they should be yet, but they used to be way worse. We’re in a position where more people are interested in unions and organizing and taking their power back. That is nothing if not its own revolution."

"No one is more passionate about workers' struggles than Kim Kelly, and it shows."

"Kim Kelly vibrantly brings struggles and sacrifices of badass working-classs heroes to life and we need to hear these voices now more than ever"

"Sex workers have always been a vital part of the labor movement and are often left out of the conversation just because of what their job is or where they came from or where they’re living. There’s so much that organized labor can learn from sex-worker organizers because they’ve had to deal with all the same bullshit that any other worker deals with—horrible wages, bad bosses, unsafe working conditions, labor laws that don’t work for them—on top of the stigma and the whore phobia and ignorance and prejudice around their work. If we’re going to stand up for workers and cover workers’ stories and say, “We care about workers,” we need to care about all workers. An injury to one needs to be an injury to all."

"Earlier on in the pandemic, there was such a contrast between the workers who had to keep going to work even before we had vaccines [and those who didn’t]; they had to keep going out and delivering food or making food or cleaning streets or doing all this essential labor that was momentarily recognized as essential work. We had a hot minute where some people got a couple extra dollars that they badly needed and some people got cheered on from the window—all that weird appreciation theater. And then all that went away, and the workers still had to keep going to work. I think there’s been that shift in the way a lot of workers see their lives, their labor, the value they are bringing to society and their employers, and what they’re getting back in return—and the math ain’t math-ing there."

"the history of labor struggles in health care, education, media, sports, and nonprofit work have shaped our world in incalculably important ways, and have been brilliantly covered by authors like Sarah Jaffe, Maximillian Alvarez, Gabriel Winant, Micah Uetricht, Britni de la Cretaz, Elizabeth Catte, Steven Greenhouse, and many others."

"Unions still exist, and they’re an option, and they’re a great way to build power with your coworkers. On top of all that, we saw and are continuing to see workers at Amazon and Starbucks—these incredibly well-known corporations that I think a lot of people have accepted as being part of the fabric of their daily lives—go up against the bosses and say, “We need more from you, because you are literally hanging out in space while we’re trying to pay our rent.”"

"The United States' labor laws are outdated, the National Labor Relations Board is still a husk of itself, understaffed and weakened after decades of neglect-and yet, there is a great and mighty wave of organizing happening regardless. (p. xxvii)"

"So many of these workers newly recognized as "essential" toiled in industries that lack labor protections, were not and still have not been paid a livable wage, still cannot access affordable health care, and are still disenfranchised by a deeply flawed system that places people of color and undocumented workers at increased risk, whether there's a pandemic raging or not. People incarcerated in jails and prisons were forced to manufacture masks, gowns, and hand sanitizer for use outside the walls, even as the virus turned these grim facilities into death traps, and many there have had to dig graves for those who were lost to its grip. Those in the medical field-doctors, nurses, hospital technicians, hospital janitors and laundry workers, funeral home owners and morticians-were placed in extreme danger by personal protective equipment shortages. The entire affair exposed the rotten, hazardous conditions that have been allowed to fester thanks to capitalist cruelty and federal malfeasance, and by hitting the streets and raising the alarm, workers are now fighting back. (p. xxvi)"

"Every worker today stands on the shoulders of giants, people you will meet here like Lucy Parsons, Cesar Chavez, Bayard Rustin, Eugene V. Debs, and Walter Reuther. But others remain unfamiliar to the average working person, and could have never envisioned the world we're in now. Some things haven't changed; bad bosses and capitalist bloodsuckers continue to do their best to keep boots on our necks and their hands in our wallets."

"I love telling people about the time when a group of disabled activists got tired of waiting for the government to actually enact regulations that were part of the 1977 Rehabilitation Act and occupied a bunch of federal buildings around the country."

"he (my father) instilled in me the unshakable idea that the union was a good thing to have and that when your boss was doing you wrong, you could count on the union to have your back. Every worker deserves to feel that way (p. xxiv)"

"None of us is an island, and every labor story is also a disability story, a queer story, a Black story, a women’s story. We’re all in this together because ultimately everyone either is a worker or was a worker or will be a worker at some point in their life. There have been efforts over the decades and centuries to separate workers on the basis of race, gender, nationality, or ability, and that’s always been bullshit. It’s just a boss’s tactic to keep us apart because when we come together, we’re strong."

"Our History Is the Future establishes Nick Estes as one of the leading scholars of our time."

"We are challenged not just to imagine, but to demand the emancipation of earth from capital. For the earth to live, capitalism must die."

"This book is a jewel-history and analysis that reads like the best poetry-certain to be a classic work as well as a study guide for continued and accelerated resistance.""

"His books include Our History Is the Future, which tells the history of Indigenous resistance over two centuries, offering a road map for collective liberation and a guide to fighting life-threatening climate change."

"We can see that settler colonialism in Israel — or, in Palestine, is really an extension of settler colonialism in North America."

"The first U.S. invasion, which was Lewis and Clark, who came through—who trespassed through our territory and were stopped by our leadership."

"There is also a growing alliance with nonindigenous communities who are seeing value in indigenous rights, and specifically treaty rights. And, to me, that is the most hopeful sort of sign of this current resistance movement, is that indigenous rights are at the forefront, because they protect everybody’s rights."

"It’s no coincidence that Indian people are in the same department that manages wildlife and federal lands"

"Estes continues in the legacy of his ancestors, from Black Elk to Vine Deloria: he turns Indigenous history right-side up as a story of self-defense against settler invasion."

"Nick Estes is a forceful writer whose work reflects the defiant spirit of the #NoDAPL movement."

"The first Thanksgiving story is — begins with the Pequot massacre by members of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, which really marks sort of — in my opinion, marks sort of the mythology of the United States as a settler-colonial country founded on sort of genocide to create, ironically, peace."

"These states have contentious relations with tribal nations to begin with, right? We didn’t sign treaties with the state governments, but yet the state governments participate in the continued criminalization of indigenous people for trying to uphold our treaty rights. And so, why are we criminals, you know, and activists, who are just trying to protect land and water? And when we go back to the treaties, in like the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty, which the Keystone XL pipeline contravenes and trespasses through treaty-protected territory of the Great Sioux Reservation, we’re not asking the state of South Dakota to do anything radical. We’re not asking nonindigenous people to do anything radical. All we’re asking them to do is to uphold their own Constitution. Your government signed the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty with us. It’s your responsibility to uphold that treaty, as well. And, you know, your own Constitution says that treaties are the supreme law of the land."

"Instead of doing to settler society what they did to us — genociding, removing, excluding — there’s a capaciousness to Indigenous resistance movements that welcomes in non-Indigenous peoples into our struggle, because that’s our primary strength, is one of relationality, one of making kin"

"The climate crisis is the greatest threat facing humanity. Given the number of imperialistic wars, white supremacist terrorist attacks, mass extinctions, concentration camps, genocides, and brutal government repression with which we as a species are currently occupying ourselves, that is truly saying something...Right now, our future is in flames, and some of those politicians are standing on the hose."

"I think when we think about climate change, oftentimes the question of climate change really centers on market-driven solutions, such as, you know, green capitalism, and how do we create markets that sort of incentivize transition to sustainable economies, right? And I think, really, what we’re kind of like beating around the bush is, is that it’s the system of capitalism that led us into this economic crisis to begin with. It’s the sort of designation of certain populations in certain territories as disposable, that has led us into our current epoch of global climate change. And so, when we talk about who’s going to bear the most burden when we transition, you know, out of the carbon economy, it most likely is going to be those populations that have historically been colonized"

"Capitalism is fundamentally a social relation. It’s a profit-driven system, whereas Indigenous sort of ways of relating is one about reciprocity and a mutual sort of respect, not just with the human, but also with the nonhuman world. And we’re undergoing, you know, the sixth mass — sixth massive extinction event, which is caused by not just climate change, but is caused by capitalist sort of systems and the profit-driven sort of motive of our current economic and social system."

"There is no more profound human bias than the expectation that tomorrow will be like today. It is a powerful heuristic tool because it is almost always correct."

"I have called the Republican Party an engine for turning social resentment into tax cuts."

"In difficult times, we turn to our poets (Nov. 29, 2016) and MSNBC video"

"Ok @elonmusk & @joerogan. Since this is getting interesting I’ll throw my hat in the ring as well. I’ll mimic Lawrence O’Donnell ... minus the castration of course," Trump responded. "That’s a bridge too far.""

"The desks are now an important part of the public health strategy in the schools"

"If Donald Trump gets dementia, how will we know?"

"This is going to be an important time for him, but I thought about him as a very important player at MSNBC for a long time. He knows more about the Senate than almost anyone else on television."

"The very highest function of woman is to raise and train the family; it is the very highest function of man also."

"Nature has so constituted us that the sexes act and react upon each other, making every “woman’s cause” a man’s cause, and every man’s cause a woman’s cause"

"Good health is a great prerequisite of successful or happy living."

"While it is undoubted true that the practice of tight lacing is regarded with growing disfavor, it is also true that the corsets in vogue, at present, are more objectionable than those worn even half a century ago."