On the night of April 4, 1968, despondent presidential hopeful Sen. Robert F. Kennedy climbed onto the back of a flat-bed truck in the heart of Indianapolis’ Black community, intending to share with the unsuspecting 2000-person crowd the grim news: Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated. Instinctively, a heartbroken Kennedy spoke the healing words … Read more
Hours after Harvard sent out an email informing students of the need to evacuate campus, my mom called dropping another piece of news: we had to close our family child care business by the end of the next week. While juggling midterms with trying to pack and move all my belongings out in two days, … Read more
This article was co-written by Corbin Duncan and Michel Nehme. It was winter in Beijing, and Gough Whitlam cut an unusual figure in a terracotta-clad temple of the Chinese capital. Towering over his Chinese counterparts at 6’3”, Whitlam’s presence was marked by obvious bemusement and subtle suspicion in equal measure. It was his second visit … Read more
Kevin Bi is a member of the Harvard College Open Data Project. Another unarmed Black man has been killed by the police. His name was George Floyd. The video of a police officer’s brazen cruelty and his utter disregard for the words “I can’t breathe” was shocking, but not new. In March, Breonna Taylor was shot … Read more
A ghostly San Francisco skyline appears in the distance. Light glares through it, and the buildings feel ethereal, leaving a brief impression of a city rather than something concrete. A VHS tape synth trumpets its arrival before fading into the haunting sound of distant strings. This is Tomorrow’s Harvest, the 2013 album by Scottish duo … Read more
Eden Fesseha, Zoë Hopkins and Ife Omidiran work with the Harvard Organization for Prison Education and Advocacy. “Thank you all for the love. This matter is urgent. I have a timeline of April 30.” These were the final words in a letter written by Michael Mauney (aka Country) asking people to call the Massachusetts district … Read more
As I write this, civilians in dozens of American cities are mounting protests against police brutality in response to the murder of George Floyd. Those who experience American society as a liberal democracy have taken these protests as an opportunity to pursue a favorite question: How would we survive without the police? The American liberal … Read more
The cover art for this article was created by Jane Li, a student at Harvard College, for the exclusive use of the HPR’s Red Line. In February 2019, illegal entry at the U.S.-Mexico border reached an 11-year high with 66,450 migrants apprehended by U.S. Border Patrol. According to the Pew Research Center, “people traveling in … Read more
The mayor of Los Angeles grasped for justification after imposing a curfew last weekend, declaring that “violence and vandalism hurts all.” Woven throughout his trite, state-sanctioned rhetoric is the basic assumption that force against property can be equated with state violence. However, violence against property is a farcical construction. You cannot suffocate a Target, starve … Read more
As I write, my Twitter account floods with notifications: protesters marching for Black lives in New York City are trapped on the Manhattan Bridge by NYPD on both sides, live-tweeting for help. I think of my friend’s Facebook Live stream of demonstrations in Washington DC, which captured the pandemonium of police and the National Guard … Read more