The sound of selling out isn’t a minor note. No. If anything, it’s a major chord blazing loudly, overproduced, polished, and clean, practically  on the front page of a magazine. When musician’s “sell-out” and their music changes, our disdain for the new sound is for an accumulation of reasons. We’re blinded by nostalgia, sure, but there’s also […]

Picture this. A green field of happy black people swaying on the melody of being for a time, carefree. On a Sunday in August, I stood in a field in Commodore Park, Brooklyn with 70,000 people, mostly black—all kinds of black—and sang in one accord with The Electric Lady herself, “Highly melanated. ArchAndroid orchestrated. Yeah, […]

An opinion piece by Manil Suri came out in the New York Times last week called “India’s Riotous Triumph of Equality.” For those who do not yet know, India recently did away with section 377 of the Indian Penal Code—a colonial era law that rendered queer sex illegal throughout the country. In effect, the ruling has decriminalized […]

It’s March 30th, 2017. I’m sitting in class, discussing Frankenstein for the third time in three semesters when I get this text: “Yo, [name of store redacted] broke street date on P5 today. I’m coming to get you now.” As a student with aspirations for a PhD, who cares deeply about their GPA for considerations […]

I’ve said it before, but I truly believe that our understanding of the political world is defined by our day to day encounters. Back in the summer of 2013, my friends and I went out for a late lunch in Jackson Heights. We had originally planned on dining at a fancy restaurant uptown, on Broadway, […]

A Red Felt Square Student activism has a rich history at Queens College, and in all of CUNY. But I think it can be useful in understanding student activism to first look at how a different student community powerfully transformed an entire region into a battleground for students’ rights. During the 2011-2012 academic year, over half […]