most—and i do mean most—academics write out of, and into, a tradition. no matter how novel (y)our ideas seem, we are entering into a conversation, not starting it. to perpetually assert the “new” is to engage in the same violence of ownership that the work often argues against.

It's publication day for Indefensible Spaces: Policing and the Struggle for Housing, available in paper & free .epub! It traces a century of struggle over Los Angeles' periphery, culminating in the use of policing to expel and repress Black tenants. Here's a look at its chapters:

personally if I were a tony presenter and I saw this live I would've wrote audra's name on a post it and slapped it on that envelope but congrats Nicole ig

I strive for grace but at the end of the day I am furious that a grating, cliche, and static performance in an inferior work won over Audra’s most historic, transcendent, gorgeous and vivid performance. Story old as time. And resonant of this political moment.

greatest living stage actor <3

Precisely. Dramatic and musical genius.

Congratulations!!

Please sign and circulate!

My 6 year old son is revising history and time traveling a pretend Knicks v Bulls game. He, as Jalen Brunson, is playing against his babysitter Brianna, as my all-time favorite player, @ScottiePippen. Brunson is winning. My loyalties are split. Proud mom but Scottie forever 😂

Listening to College Dropout after so many years and I am in such a state of mourning. The creative and political death is just tragic.

💥BREAKING💥   Dozens of striking San Francisco hotel workers and supporters are risking arrest as they block traffic on Powell Street in front of @Marriott’s Westin St. Francis.   After weeks on strike, we want the hotels to settle a contract that invests in this city.

From the goat.

Exactly.

On Wednesday, I am scheduled to give the 2024 Mamie Phipps Clark and Kenneth B. Clark Distinguished Lecture at Columbia University. In light of the university’s current repression and criminalization of students, as well as the present academic boycott of the institution, I have canceled my appearance and will not accept the accompanying $10,000 award. I urge Columbia University to meet each of the principled and reasonable demands of the boycott. I encourage everyone, but especially my academic colleagues, to stand in solidarity with Columbia University students and their marvelous militancy by honoring the boycott. Let us find inspiration and leadership in this new generation of freedom fighters as they engage in this beautiful, righteous, courageous, and uncompromising struggle for global freedom and justice.

It's an honor to be in this company and to engage this transformational book.

As I work in my office, this is what Columbia looks like. In advance of a nonviolent, university-authorized, student protest.

Congrats, Ori! This is the book to run out and buy or steal or borrow or something now.

Political home.