I first saw the videos, I thought they were a hoax.  It didn’t register in my brain that an explosion of that magnitude could have happened in Beirut. It seemed like an end, like an apocalypse; everyone must be dead. Then, as I checked WhatsApp groups and called friends, I confirmed that everyone I was close to was, in fact, still alive. Even after an end it is never the end, and time keeps on going. That is what apocalyptic thinking fails to take into account. The end does not come in one fell swoop, no wiping the slate clean and starting over. There are only a series of mini-catastrophes that compile one onto the other and you have to build on top of the shit and rubble of the previous events, negotiating your way towards a hazy horizon. The… Read More...

Liaisons, I write to you from “ground zero.” South Minneapolis. Just a short walk from what remains of the Third Precinct, where just over two months ago thousands of people wore the police down, forced them to retreat under a hail of rocks, and burned their empty station. Unlike many other places around the country experiencing flare-ups in the weeks since, the unrest that shook my city at the end of May has not returned. That is not to say that nothing is happening — far from it — but that the energy that catalyzed the massive uprising we’ve all experienced has been definitively snuffed out. In the aftermath of the Third Precinct’s torching, as insurgent crowds showed no signs of slowing, I witnessed the state deploy extremely novel techniques to reinstate law & order when nothing seemed less possible. I… Read More...