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Melissa Gira Grant @melissagiragrant.com · 1h

I now have a paper-and-pen list of emails and texts to reply to, this is the future I never wanted

Reposted by Melissa Gira Grant

Perry Bacon @perrybaconjr.bsky.social · 2h

I read the piece. You shouldn't. He dismisses the "No Kings" protests as liberals in blue cities. He invokes Rosa Parks, as if rural white people in the 60s loved everything that the movement then was doing. "We need a movement but not this one" is a core centrist tact these days.

Ezra Levin ❌👑 @ezralevin.bsky.social · 2h

Is this a joke. www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...

America Needs a Mass Movement—Now

Without one, America may sink into autocracy for decades.

www.theatlantic.com

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Reposted by Melissa Gira Grant

Anna O. Law @unlawfulentries.bsky.social · 2h

It took the US until 1965 to move to a national origins neutral system of selection for permanent immigration which we've been operating under. And 1980 until the US moved away from ideological exclusions to qualify for refugee status. Now he wants to roll it all the way back. I am so tired.

jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 3h

asylum but only for racists apparently www.nytimes.com/2025/10/15/u...

Trump Considers Overhaul of Refugee System That Would Favor White People

www.nytimes.com

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Melissa Gira Grant @melissagiragrant.com · 1h

anyway: this was not meant to excuse the future mayor of nyc nor to be a comprehensive breakdown of "where is the movement for sex workers rights at in the US in 2025" just my takes based on what I have seen these last few years, but don't necessarily have a finite story to tell about yet

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Melissa Gira Grant @melissagiragrant.com · 1h

also not negligible: the impact of the 2021-2025 war on trans people in/by the state legislatures and in the streets from the far right, all of which absolutely impacted sex workers and shifted immediate needs

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Melissa Gira Grant @melissagiragrant.com · 1h

people's work necessarily had to shift to meet grave and immediate community needs, and then more sex work groups seem to have stayed with or moved into that work, outside the c3 structure, working on community resources over policy change (and that's all fine, all of that is important)

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Melissa Gira Grant @melissagiragrant.com · 1h

like it was only for approximately five minutes that any democrats had any courage on sex work (and now....?). just note the date of this poll, and what we all began living through about one month after (which also damaged state-based decrim campaigns' momentum + many pivoted to mutual aid)

The New Majority Behind Sex Work Decriminalization

An exclusive look at a groundbreaking policy transformation. There are lessons for the left to learn here.

newrepublic.com

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Melissa Gira Grant @melissagiragrant.com · 1h

may be more relevant as a vibe shift than as policy shift—because decrim requires changes to state laws, and also because there will be no meaningful decrim in NYC with the NYPD we have. I would be asking a lot more re: how he'd get the NYPD to abide *any* policy change he wants to make

Peter Sterne @petersterne.com · 2h

In the past, Zohran Mamdani has supported full decriminalization of sex work (which is undoubtedly the leftist position). But he's been harshly criticized by social conservatives for that position, and now his campaign suggests he may be open to the Nordic model. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/15/n...

“Criminalizing clients, friends, family and allies of sex workers makes it extraordinarily difficult for them to meaningfully participate in public life, including paying rent, earning a living or even walking down the street,” he wrote in a questionnaire when running for re-election in 2022.

He also said in the survey that he opposed the “Nordic model,” legislation that would prohibit arresting prostitutes themselves while allowing clients to be detained and charged.

Asked if Mr. Mamdani still opposes that approach, Dora Pekec, his campaign spokeswoman, said the campaign was still weighing the advice of policy experts and advocates.

Mr. Mamdani cosponsors several bills to decriminalize prostitution, none of which have advanced out of committee. One would have repealed “statutes that criminalize sex work between consenting adults, but keep laws relating to minors or trafficking.”

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Reposted by Melissa Gira Grant

Eric Michael Garcia @ericmgarcia.bsky.social · 2h

NBC Out has had some of the best coverage of LGBTQ+ news in the last few years. In a time when the Trump administration takes historic assaults on transgender people's rights, this feels short-sighted. Good journalism is good business.
www.thewrap.com/nbc-news-lay...

NBC News’ 150 Layoffs Gut Black, Latino, Asian American and LGBTQ+ Diversity Teams

The cuts affected teams across the NBC News operation and came as the network no longer needed to support two different news operations. MSNBC has begun growing its own newsroom, hiring swaths of tale...

www.thewrap.com

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Melissa Gira Grant @melissagiragrant.com · 2h

may be a throwback but seeing purple/green/white hearts together used to be a good terf-detector (doing something to UK suffrage colors that no UK suffragist ever asked for)

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Melissa Gira Grant @melissagiragrant.com · 2h

I squinted and saw "the balance or the tension" and that was enough

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Melissa Gira Grant @melissagiragrant.com · 2h

I can elaborate a little (knowing some of these folks might be reading)... it went both ways, with even well-meaning people still expecting me to meet at bars inside and feeling bad about them not getting it, and some people who, after I just mentioned long Covid, ghosted, and it's been years

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Melissa Gira Grant @melissagiragrant.com · 2h

the not-knowing was in some ways worse for me than finally getting consensus from docs on what was going on and the relief of treatment—I am so glad to hear you are doing well

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Reposted by Melissa Gira Grant

Wesley Morgan @wesleymorgan.bsky.social · 5h

Chicago, LA, etc. have already become something that to me is more worrying than Trump’s “training ground for the military”: training grounds for a rapidly expanding parallel domestic paramilitary force—CBP—that lacks the military’s guardrails and is eager to do what the military is reluctant to.

Kori Schake @kschake.bsky.social · 1d

"The United States cannot remain a federalist system when soldiers from one state are sent to police another state against the explicit wishes of its elected leaders and when the justification for it is a lie.” @amandacarpenter.bsky.social

The ‘Chipocalypse’ is now

A training ground for the military?

www.ifyoucankeepit.org

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Melissa Gira Grant @melissagiragrant.com · 6h

or maybe that "loosening" is meant to communicate that "norms" were all that changed, and this is what was always there, restrained, waiting for an opportunity

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Melissa Gira Grant @melissagiragrant.com · 6h

it's striking to see genocidal and white supremacist speech cast in this story as a "loosening of political norms" and not the corrosion or destruction of anything

‘I love Hitler’: Leaked messages expose Young Republicans’ racist chat

Thousands of private messages reveal young GOP leaders joking about gas chambers, slavery and rape.

www.politico.com

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Melissa Gira Grant @melissagiragrant.com · 8h

I have such fond memories of these little guys (saw them when I did similar trek in Cape Town from Robben Island in 1999)

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Melissa Gira Grant @melissagiragrant.com · 10h

Kitty forever.

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Melissa Gira Grant @melissagiragrant.com · 10h

Solidarity.

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Melissa Gira Grant @melissagiragrant.com · 10h

Thanks for that. Not knowing how to write through it (through brain fog, PEM…) was among the scarier parts.

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Melissa Gira Grant @melissagiragrant.com · 10h

listening to the Covid Year Two/Three/Four episodes of @deathpanel.bsky.social might offer a sense of how that rhetoric developed and entrenched

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Melissa Gira Grant @melissagiragrant.com · 10h

Meanwhile, if your plan is based on an accurate assessment of current data… www.statnews.com/2025/10/14/c...

from STAT News:

What may be lost

Potentially among the missing: information about health services, hospitalization, ER visits, office visits, and individual warning signs.

"Anything related to any emerging outbreaks are also going to be compromised," Denys Lau, formerly the director of a division that tracks the nation's health care provision and utilization, told STAT. He is now editor-in chief of the American Journal of Public
Health.

The fruits of NHANES are shared with the public as well as within other federal agencies, including the National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration. There is nothing flashy about the regular NCHS reports, which…

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Melissa Gira Grant @melissagiragrant.com · 10h

Please chill, this is hard enough

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Melissa Gira Grant @melissagiragrant.com · 10h

It’s all fear and managing fear badly.

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Melissa Gira Grant @melissagiragrant.com · 10h

If you gave up masking long ago, you can start anytime. “But none of my friends do.” Think back: did some of your friends “just disappear” in 2021 and stop planning hang outs with you?

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