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The Hardest (Unexpected) Part About Being a Trans Man
In the state of Missouri where I began my transition to “Mitch,” you have to undergo gender therapy in order to receive a letter of authorization from a therapist stating that you are of sound mind and that you are, in fact, transgender and experiencing gender dysphoria – a disorder that calls for appropriate medical intervention – before you can start hormones. During my time in gender therapy, we discussed some of what to expect once I began transitioning. Most of this was centered around the physical changes — more body hair, a deepening of the voice, changes in fat…
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Is the U.S. Actually a Democracy?
With the US election taking place tomorrow (11/3/20) and one of the worst presidents this country has ever seen occupying the highest office, I keep hearing a similar battle cry: “VOTE NOW TO SAVE OUR DEMOCRACY!” My sincere hope is that this message is possible and that US democracy still does exist, even if it’s just hanging by a thread. Still, as we head into the election, I have an anxious reply on repeat in my head: You can’t save something that doesn’t exist. Does US democracy still exist? Or is it actually dead? Some of the world’s leading economics…
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Why Environmentalism is a Race Issue
When you think of “environmentalism,” where does your mind go first? Climate change? Solar power and wind energy? Rampant wildfires? The Green New Deal? These would all be accurate, but have you ever considered racism as being a vital part of this concept? Because it is. This is where environmental justice, and its subsidiary, environmental racism, come into play. What is Environmental Racism & Environmental Justice? Environmental racism means that environmental risks are not evenly distributed across groups of people, and that factors like age, poverty, race and minority status place some groups at higher risk for environmental disease. It…
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Lessons & Truth from Coup 53 Documentary
Recently I had the pleasure of pre-screening Coup 53, a documentary directed by Taghi Amirani, edited by Walter Murch, and featuring a brilliant character reenactment by none other than Ralph Fiennes himself, who is somewhat of a legend in the film world (he played Lord Voldemort in Harry Potter, for instance). This film was a revelatory masterpiece covering the 1953 CIA + MI6 staged coup in Iran that overthrew the democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh. This story blew the doors off my mind and taught me so much that I – shamefully – did not even know about the…
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Celebrating Neurodiversity in the Workplace
I built my advertising career for 10+ years — specifically in digital marketing. As such, I worked at some of the top advertising agencies in Kansas City before spinning off on my own to build a 100% virtual agency and moving to Chicago. The reason that I ultimately decided to go off on my own was threefold: I truly felt that I have an entrepreneurial spirit, and I had always wanted to be self-employed. I personally felt that there had to be a better way to make a living than sitting at an office for 8 hours (surveys estimate that…
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What is Democratic Socialism?
According to the book, Democratic Socialism: A Global Survey by Donald F. Busky, democratic socialism can be defined as combining the “ideas of liberal-democratic government with that of social ownership and control of the economy.” The author goes on to say that it is a “wing of the socialist movement that combines a belief in socially owned economy with that of political democracy.” The term “democratic socialism” is often used to distinguish those ideals from a more traditional view of socialism, which aligns itself more with communism than a democracy. Critics of this view democratic socialism as being a watered-down…
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A Guide to Understanding the History of Police Violence in the U.S.
In order to understand police brutality, we have to increase our holistic awareness and understanding of the systems that allow policy brutality to exist in the first place. In other words, we cannot effectively understand modern-day police violence without understanding the deeply rooted racial history in our country. Like many institutionalized concepts, this is a tangled web that goes back to the arrival of the first African slaves in America in 1619 (and in all honesty, before that as well, but that is beyond the scope of this particular list of resources). So in order to understand “police brutality” as…
