El-Sayed: You don't want to talk about gas prices. You don't want to talk about groceries….You want to bring up all this culture war
Watters: Do you think men should play in women’s sports?
El-Sayed: I'm running for U.S. Senate. It's insane. I'm out here trying to take on the health care crisis and big pharma, and you're asking me about who gets to play what sports
"When people talk about the need for Black Excellence I counter with an insistence on Black mediocrity: the right for black people to be as average, flawed, compromised & mistaken as any other group of people. The right, ultimately, to be human." R.I.P. Jason Arday
I needed to move a sofa.
I mentioned this to an American. He said, "You know anybody with a truck?"
I did not know anybody with a truck.
He looked at me with real concern. Not pity. Concern. The way you look at a man who has told you he does not have a name.
"You gotta know somebody with a truck."
I asked how one acquires such a person.
He said, "You just do."
This is the third time I have received that answer in this country. It is the answer to everything here. You just do. There is no process. There is only the eventual fact of having.
He said, "Ask Kevin."
I do not know a Kevin. He said Kevin like I should. He said it the way you say a shared uncle.
I met Kevin four days later. Kevin owns a truck. Kevin does not own a truck for himself. Nobody owns a truck for themselves. Kevin owns a truck for a fifteen mile radius.
Inside I said: THIS MAN HAS TAKEN A VOW. HE DID NOT ANNOUNCE IT. HE SIMPLY PURCHASED A BED AND ACCEPTED THE CONSEQUENCES.
Kevin arrived on Saturday. He brought the truck. He also brought a second man.
I had not asked for a second man.
The second man's name is Tony. Tony came because Kevin came. Tony did not know me. Tony did not ask what we were moving. Tony brought gloves.
They moved the sofa in eleven minutes.
I offered them money. Both of them laughed at the same time, which felt rehearsed and was not.
I asked what I owed them.
Kevin said, "Buy the pizza."
That is the price. That is the entire economy. The truck costs one pizza and the pizza is not negotiable and the pizza is also not expensive and everyone knows what size.
Inside I said: THE FEE IS FIXED ACROSS THE ENTIRE NATION AND WAS SET BY NO ONE.
We ate on the floor because the sofa was against the wall and none of us wanted to be the first to sit on it.
Tony told me his daughter plays soccer. I asked if she is good. He said, "She's aggressive."
I still think about that.
Three weeks later, Kevin texted me.
"You free Sunday? Helping Tony move a fridge."
He did not ask if I wanted to. He informed me of a fridge.
Inside I said: I HAVE BEEN CALLED UP. I DID NOT ENLIST. THE PAPERS WERE FILED ON MY BEHALF.
I went. I moved the fridge. I have no truck. I contributed only arms.
Afterward, a man I had never met asked me if I knew anybody with a truck.
I said, "Yeah, I got a guy."
I have a guy.
I am somebody's guy now, too. Tony has told two people about me.
He describes me as "the guy who's strong for his size."
I have never been prouder of a sentence in my life.
This is so heartbreaking; He's just a kid. The pain in his voice is evident.
This is institutional racism in action.
Daryl McLune, 16 at the time, was arrested in Wandsworth in July 2021 on suspicion of attempted murder after his mum, Annette McLune, jumped from the roof of their flat in a suicide attempt.
He'd been at his grandma's and cycled home to find his mum critically injured. He was then handcuffed in the street and held for nearly 24 hours, despite not being involved.
Police later found a suicide note and razor blades showing it was self-harm, and he was released without charge. The experience left him with PTSD and affected his schooling.
He later sued the Met Police, and a jury found he was racially discriminated against and treated less fairly than a non-Black boy would have been, awarding him £130,000.
His barrister said it wasn't careful policing, it was a child in crisis being wrongly treated as a suspect, and that discrimination can be unconscious.
that’s the question isn’t it. what WILL she do? there are no youth clubs for her to attend. food, cinema tickets, any sort of third space activity is all too expensive. their parents are underpaid, saturday jobs don’t exist any more, children have truly been abandoned by the govt
One of the reasons that both Neoliberals and fascists hate people like Mamdani is because he proves they are all liars who have effectively sold out their constituents to billionaire interests.
All of the pain we have been told to endure has been a choice to sate the wealthy
How do you cover this? A previous president would have received wall to wall coverage for even one of these tweets. And yet Trump floods the zone and the media cannot and often will not cover the sheer extent of his insanity and indecency.
Marvel TV Head, Brad Winderbaum, says his favorite episode in the history of Marvel Television was the prison escape scene in Daredevil Season 3
"That one-shot is unbelievable. It's one of the best ever in the history of cinema."