Defending the Undefended: The Rights of Nature during the Age of Humans
Human activities are on path to destroy the only known environment capable of sustaining life. Our consumption and depletion rate of natural resources will lead us to a point where there will be no resources to trade, no need for economies to develop, no need for society to progress or for politics to rule—in essence, […]
Black Panther and the Erosion of Our Collective Imagination
In the weeks since I watched Black Panther, the film that, to many, reflects the magnitude of recent gains made in advancing Black representation in U.S. popular culture, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about loss in the African diaspora. About what has been gone, stolen, for centuries—to different degrees and in different ways […]
The Cause for, Victim of, and Cure to Gay Loneliness
For five years of my life, I lived openly and unapologetically as a gay man. Twelve years old and gay as all hell, I was not a typical middle-school student you would find in 2012, even in my hometown of Long Beach in Southern California. And when the world didn’t end that December, I thought, […]
Senseless Tragedy
I will not use names, for there are far too many victims for us to remember. I won’t use dates or towns, because this crisis doesn’t answer to time and place. I refuse to use numbers and statistics, as numbers are lost on those who are numb to the demands of tragedy. Another mass shooting […]
Immigration Policy: How Protectionism Becomes Racism
The human predisposition is to fear what we do not know, which helps us to identify potential threats and protect ourselves from them. It is precisely this psychological impulse that both leads a child not to eat a strange new food and has led to President Donald Trump’s protectionist immigration policies, particularly the travel ban […]
Protest and Productivity
From the inception of our country, protest, defined by the Merriam Webster Dictionary as “a solemn declaration of opinion and usually of dissent,” has played a role in how citizens can voice concerns and draw a government’s attention to particular issues. In times of discontent, people have turned to protests to voice their opposition toward […]
Silencing of Dissent Continues During SGA Election
Martha Durkee-Neuman is the Outreach Coordinator for SARC. Jace Ritchey is the SGA Representative for SARC and a former campaign worker for the Suchira+Paulina: Believe In More Campaign. Over the past week, the ReNUal 2017 Campaign and the Student Government Association (SGA) Elections Committee have become complicit in Northeastern University administrators’ penchant for silencing survivors […]
The Incompetence of Our Student Government
Last year, I wrote that our student government had failed us. Under President Eric Tyler and Executive Vice President (EVP) Morgan Helfman’s administration – and many of their predecessors – Northeastern Student Government Association (SGA) was unaccountable, non-transparent, and unrepresentative of the student body. The referenda vetting process in place was borderline autocratic, and student […]
The Overlooked Racial Complexities of the Opioid Epidemic
Prescription opioids and heroin (from this point on summarily referred to as opioids; despite differences in legality, they both have opiate bases and fall under a shared political umbrella) have created the latest substance-related epidemic in America.[1] In a rare frenzy of bipartisanship, the House of Representatives passed 18 opioid-related bills during one week in […]
Felon Disenfranchisement in Light of Unjust Laws
The New York Times recently published a “Room for Debate” on the topic of felon disenfranchisement with Roger Clegg, president and general counsel of the Center for Equal Opportunity, arguing for felon disenfranchisement, and Janai S. Nelson, associate director-counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, arguing against it. The debate centered on the […]