White Supremacy is so insidious that even if you’ve spent years working to eliminate anti-black beliefs from your subconscious, there will always be more hiding under the false pretense of reason and logic. Denny Upkins is here to keep us on our toes, make sure we check our biases at the door, and to direct us toward the beliefs we should actively be trying to incorporate into our understanding of the black experience, instead.
Tag: guest post
The Unique Power of Digital Organizing
Because of the limitations of my chronic illness, I am so grateful that the genre of digital organizing enables remote forms of activism through mediums like text messages, social media, and email campaigns. Ingrid Cruz is here to break down this collection of strategies for us.
Interview with Alice Wong: Engaging with Stories of Disabled People
Today’s article is a first for Yopp: We have our very first interview! The wonderful Dennis Upkins had the opportunity to connect with Alice Wong, an amazing disability activist who I’ve admired from afar for several years, about the importance of the stories of disabled people. If you’ve been looking for some disability related resources to consume and activists to follow, this article is full of them. I highly recommend going and checking out Alice’s …Read More
You Are Not Alone: How to Respond to Escalating Fascism
If your social circles are progressive in the same way mine are, then you’ve heard warnings about the continuing escalating of fascism in the US, and the threat of violent backlash if Trump loses the presidential election. This post gives you some ideas of what to do about it.
S.W.A.T.: How a TV Show Gave Us A Template For Police Reform
We know that fiction can be based on fact but how often is fact influenced by fiction? The beloved show Star Trek has long been famous for inspiring the invention of many of the “futuristic” technologies used in the show. The Black Lives Matter movement has repeatedly called on us to dismantle and recreate our law enforcement systems, to replace the current oppressive, violent, and racist version. Now, Dennis Upkins takes a look at how the reboot of the television show S.W.A.T. can offer inspiration for what police, and related agencies, could look like in the future.
Hanging Out with Your Autistic Friends: A Guide to Social Inclusivity
If you have any autistic friends, there might be a chance that they’re not always as eager to hang out. Or maybe they do want to hang out but it seems like they always want to leave early. In this post, I’ll discuss what challenges your autistic friend is likely facing and what you can do to make hanging out fun and accessible for both of you.
The Things Our Pets Can Teach Us About Self-Care
As a change of pace, I’m offering you this lovely, silly self-care article, with the hopes that it both gives you good reminders for healthy habits to practice during the pandemic, and also gives you a laugh. Rats got a pretty bad rap in previous pandemics, and apparently, they’d like to make it up to us.
What Bolivia Can Teach Us About Confronting Systemic Violence
Guest writer Marie-Ève Monette does an excellent job connecting the recent protests in the US to movements in Bolivia that have fought against colonialism and gender-based violence, as well as looking at the question of when we should use which tools in activism.
7 Lessons on Racism That White People Need To Learn
When the Black Lives Matter protests reached a peak in June 2020, I sought out Dennis Upkins’ writing, whose scathing and witty critiques have been published here before. I’m honored to publish these lessons on racism that he sent me.
The Complexion For The Protection: White Privilege in Media
As always, the beauty of guest posts on this blog is that they enable Yopp to include subjects and types of content that I could never hope to create myself. In order to shift the societal scrutiny off of people of color and onto white people for once, Dennis does what he does best: Biting critiques about the ways media represents and encourages our society’s racial disparities, as well as educating us on the often …Read More