Can a safe choice help Biden win the “referendum” on Trump?
Illustrations by Hannah Robinson Due to many mail-in votes it seems unlikely that there will be a U.S Presidential election winner on November 3rd. I’ll go one further; there probably won’t…
The fashion industry continues to exclude and exploit black people
Illustrations by Hannah Robinson Diversity and representation within the fashion industry has been a longstanding subject of contention. In the last decade, this issue has gained traction, as consumers are increasingly…
From Dystopian YA fiction to Black Lives Matter; the evolution of the revolution
Illustrations by Hannah Robinson On Monday 1st June, President Trump stood outside Washington D.C.’s St John’s Church holding up a Bible; in a photo-op meant to show the strength and resilience…
Black Lives Matter: A cause that needs direction
Illustrations by Hannah Robinson The Black Lives Matter movement isn’t a new one, but the murder of George Floyd has once again thrust it to the fore and the video of…
Donald Trump is set for a one term presidency
Illustrations by Hannah Robinson Logic has been cast aside with bombastic disdain by Donald Trump, a populist outsider who confounds expectation. His opponents do not want to be made electorally foolish…
Prison Labour: the untold truth
Illustrations by Hannah Robinson Over the last few weeks, we have seen that the Black Lives Matter movement has hugely increased momentum and support. The ongoing protests, which were majority peaceful,…
Political bias and mistrust are corroding our democracy
Illustrations by Hannah Robinson Over time, political interest has grown but our trust in the system has markedly diminished. We’ve lost trust in traditional news channels and increasingly look to social…
Why I’m not expecting black people to talk about race
Illustrations by Hannah Robinson In her seminal work Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race, Reni Eddo-Lodge conveys her frustration at her attempts to explain structural racism to…
Systemic racism: the true legacy of empire?
Illustrations by Hannah Robinson It is very easy to look across the pond to the United States, see the deep-rooted societal issues around race relations and say: ‘that is tragic, but…
COVID-19 poses a threat to abortion rights worldwide
Illustrations by Hannah Robinson Despite the claims that COVID-19 has become less lethal, there is growing evidence that we are only just starting to see the extent of collateral damage that…
Why does racism still underpin policing in the USA?
Illustrations by Hannah Robinson America’s original sin perpetuates. Like it or not, the notion of whiteness over blackness is enshrined within American history, and it still fundamentally underpins racial inequality in…
Instagram influencers are undermining activism
Illustrations by Hannah Robinson It has been almost three weeks since protests began following George Floyd’s murder in Minneapolis. What has followed has been momentous. Protests have spread internationally in support…
Biden has to prove he is capable of making the promises of change a reality
Illustrations by Hannah Robinson Following George Floyd’s death, and the subsequent protest marches, the US has become even more divided– between those fighting for change, versus those fighting to sustain the…
America’s racist history – how we can make the future different?
Illustrations by Hannah Robinson Three weeks ago, I wrote an article commenting on how the fatal shooting of unarmed black jogger Ahmaud Arbery was symptomatic of a system which prioritizes the…
White silence is no longer an option
Illustrations by Hannah Robinson The murder of George Floyd has seen people across the world mobilise in acts of solidarity on an unprecedented scale. It has managed to create greater awareness…
The UK Government’s deafening silence is complicity of the highest order
Illustrations by Hannah Robinson On Sunday, Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab decided to change the job description of one of the Great Offices of State, in order to appease a racist. When…
Complacency is complicity: black lives matter in the UK too
Illustrations by Hannah Robinson “Please I can’t breathe. My stomach hurts. My neck hurts. Everything hurts. They’re going to kill me.” GEORGE FLOYD, 2020. “I can’t breathe.” ERIC GARNER, 2014. People…
Beware the age of the Political Fool
Illustration by Hannah Robinson It is fashionable to label political eras. The last 60 years of American Presidency, for instance, is normally divided into imperial, imperilled and post-imperial segments. David Runciman,…
COVID-19: The End of the American Century
Illustrations by Hannah Robinson Donald Trump’s petulance on the global stage during this crisis has provided an open door for others to take control of global hegemony. The 45th President of…
Ahmaud Arbery’s story is more sombre proof of the reality of rights before lives
Illustration by Hannah Robinson On April 22nd, 1993, 18-year-old Stephen Lawrence was stabbed to death by white supremacists whilst waiting at a bus stop in South-East London. On the 28th April…
I Would’ve Voted for Trump in 2016 – But I Have Since Changed My Mind
To understand why the majority of America voted Trump, you need to understand the climate of 2016. Obama, the man that promised ‘Yes, we can!’ had broken a string of…
Trump’s handling of this crisis exposes his shocking campaign tactics
Illustrations by Hannah Robinson President Trump’s daily press conferences are incomparable to anything politics has seen before. Topics range from him being number one on Facebook (for what nobody knows) anti-malarial…
Fake news hysteria can only lead to fake solutions
Illustration by Hannah Robinson Fake news has become an omnipresent aspect of politics around the globe. It appears that no election, referendum, or debate can happen without this ubiquitous term being…
Even in Black History Month black voices are marginalised
Scott Allen, Republican state senator for Wisconsin, ushered in the new year with a revised list for celebrating this Black History Month in America. The catch is that it consists,…
Iran vows “severe revenge”; but who will actually suffer?
Illustration by Hannah Robinson Following the death of Iranian general Qasem Soleimani the world has, quite frankly, gone into a spin. Three days into the new year and Trump is tweeting…
Unpredictable politics: Gordon Brown and Salman Rushdie on Brexit, Trump and turmoil
You might not think that the concerns of a former Prime Minister and a literary giant would have any notable similarities. But Gordon Brown and Salman Rushdie addressed themes with…
Alabama, Georgia, I refuse not to be heard
Many platforms, including the Broad, have published articles in the wake of the abortion laws passed in Alabama and Georgia. When deciding whether to write my own article on the…
We cannot ignore America’s war on the female body
Every single time abortion laws are tightened, women suffer. The lives of unborn bundles of cells are being put above the lives of living, breathing, human women, so we need…
Is a US-Russian alliance on the cards?
And no, I am not talking about the clientelist relationship between Donald J. Trump and Vladimir Putin. I am talking about an overt geostrategic alliance between the two largest countries…
The Columbine shootings marked a new kind of terror
20 April 1999. A pair of students, armed with semi-automatic rifles and homemade pipe bombs, walked into their high school in Littleton, Colorado and introduced the world to a new…
AUMF is America’s blank cheque for war
Since 2001, the United States has been engaged in the nebulous War on Terror, a war with no clarity nor end in sight. The legal justification for this forever-war is…
Boeing is going under and it’s taking Washington too
Boeing has been dealt a blow it will be recoiling from for some time. In just six months, its new 737 Max 8 model, the latest instalment to Boeing’s narrow-body…
What links Robin Williams and a Ukrainian presidential campaign?
Just over a decade ago, the late Robin Williams starred in a comedy called ‘Man of the Year’. In the movie, Wiliams plays a satirical talk show host who claims…
White people need re-educating about racism
There is this great fear over the word ‘racist’. Calling someone a racist – now that is just too far. It is often presented as over-dramatic name-calling, a means to…
North Korea needs to reform, but how?
Regime changes, from communism to capitalism, can take many shapes. In the best cases, we might see a peaceful transition into democracy in a way akin to the Velvet Revolution…
Trump’s shutdown is unnecessary and cruel
I found peace following a semester at war with homesickness. Once again able to drive around aimlessly, eat endless pits of Mexican food, catch up with family and friends, remind…
America has lost its grip on morality
I’ve had quite a few drawing room debates recently about whether Trump can reasonably be compared to Hitler. The more relaxed amongst us constantly reassure me that I’m overreacting to…
Microanalysing Ocasio-Cortez is judgemental and reductive
The US Midterms results a couple weeks back have ushered in a younger, more diverse demographic of congresspeople that will be descending on the House of Representatives come January. The…
The US can’t ignore the caravan, they helped cause it
On October 13th, in the city of San Pedro Sula in Honduras – the crime capital of the world for two years running – a caravan full of people desperate…
You can agree with a movement and disagree with its leaders
From Time’s Up, Black Lives Matter and March For Our Lives, this moment, dictated by dramatic political and social changes, is a crucial time for activism and represents a changing…
The Midterms’ firsts were inspirational and disappointing
After a long night anxiously watching midterms and aggressively drinking iced coffee from a massive reusable bottle that has a sticker with the fitting phrase “A woman’s place is in…
Trump must be held responsible for his fear mongering
When living abroad, news from home doesn’t seem to travel so fast. It may take days to hear of what the States’ administration is up to now, and it can…
Voter suppression shows how vital your vote is
The midterms are coming, and I’m preparing myself. While I refuse to become a pessimist, the memories of the 2016 election continuously force a heavy dose of reality down my…
Fighting fire with fire is the wrong reaction to Pittsburgh
In the aftermath of the cowardly, anti-Semitic attack on the Pittsburgh synagogue, there has been an outpouring of support for the Jewish community. A dark day in Pittsburgh history and…
If you feel like surrendering, vote instead
My frustration began as a sixteen-year-old girl. Enraged with the rise of Donald Trump and new conservative ideals, disappointed in emerging political polarization, and concerned with the future of my…
Conservative no more: Texas and Bavaria?
In the twenty-two years that I have lived on this planet, change has not been difficult to come across, bar a few notable exceptions. Yet in 2018, two everlasting political…
City of Stars: the road from Skid Row to Bel Air… and back again
I was lucky enough to spend last year living in the sunny and sophisticated city of Santa Barbara. California’s very own American Riviera. Just two hours north of Los Angeles’…
The Kavanaugh hearings upset victims and viewers alike
The coverage of the Brett Kavanaugh and Dr. Christine Blasey Ford hearings are yet to near their end. I watched the hearings, from my computer in the living room to…
Kaepernick and the demographic weight of the ‘Nike Democrats’
Colin Kaepernick should not be in the news. According to most advanced metrics, he is an above-average quarterback, who should be employed by an NFL team wanting to make a…
Kavanaugh, and men like him, must be stopped
Men go on a date hoping to get laid, women go on a date hoping to not get killed. To some, that sentiment may seem excessive or exaggerated. And maybe…
Did the US Open treat Serena Williams fairly?
Since the conclusion of the US Open last Saturday, it’s been difficult to avoid the news surrounding Serena Williams and her apparent meltdown during her loss to Naomi Osaka. From…
Safe injection sites are short sighted and racially charged
In light of America’s current opioid epidemic, the US government has fallen under immense pressure to come up with a solution. With more than two million Americans suffering from addiction…
Mexico’s president is a ruthlessly pragmatic Messiah
On July 1 2018, Mexico’s streets witnessed a large wave of jubilation as Andrés Manuel López Obrador (commonly referred to as AMLO), became the first president-elect in thirty years to…
3D guns aren’t bulletproof yet and nor is gun law
After I first read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, I first played Deus Ex, and the first time I watched Robocop (the original one, obviously), I wondered just how…
Money maketh man: the cash dictating Trumps policies
With the press recoiling from, and rightly hammering, Trump’s most recent shambles in Helsinki, the rest of us are just confused. The sit-com, that is contemporary US politics, is as…