Anya Kamenetz
@anya1anya.bsky.social
5.3K followers 1.2K following 890 posts
Ex-NPR. Writer. New Narratives Fellow, EHRP. Books: Generation Debt, DIY U, The Art of Screen Time, The Test, The Stolen Year, and next up: Falling In Love With The World Again. thegoldenhour.substack.com
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Reposted by Anya Kamenetz
jessemermell.bsky.social
He is 13. A 7th grader w/ a pending asylum case. Being held more than 500 miles from home & housed w/ adults. He called his mom crying, & reported that he’s sleeping on concrete w/ an aluminum blanket.

How is this anything other than sick & shameful? www.bostonglobe.com/2025/10/12/m...
Everett 13-year-old arrested by ICE and sent to Virginia detention facility - The Boston Globe
The boy’s mother, Josiele Berto, was called to pick her son up from the Everett Police Department on Thursday, the day he was arrested.
www.bostonglobe.com
Reposted by Anya Kamenetz
jeffvandermeer.bsky.social
This heartfelt and meaningful statement by Portland resident and author Cristina Breshears on another social media platform bears reposting here. I don't think the intent is to idealize Portland but to remind all of us what is important and why. (Posted here with permission.)
For nine nights now, the steady thrum of Black Hawk helicopters has circled over Portland. The sound is constant, invasive; a low mechanical beating above our homes. It’s expensive. It’s intimidating. And it’s unnecessary.

Our protests have been largely peaceful. There is no insurrection here. Yet this federalized military presence makes us feel like we are living in a war zone (the very kind of chaos this administration claims to be protecting us from). 

The irony is painful: it is only this occupation that makes Portland feel unsafe.

Each hour of helicopter flight costs taxpayers between $2,000 and $4,000, depending on crew, fuel, and maintenance. Multiply that by multiple aircraft over multiple nights, and you’re looking at hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of dollars burned into the sky. Meanwhile, the Woodstock Food Pantry at All Saints Episcopal Church — which feeds working families, elders, and people with disabilities — has seen its federal funding slashed by 75%. How can we justify pouring public money into intimidation while cutting aid to those who simply need to eat?

This is waste, fraud, and abuse in plain sight:
* Waste of public resources on military theatrics.
* Fraud in the name of “public safety.”
* Abuse of the communities that federal agencies claim to protect.

Portland is a Sanctuary City. A sanctuary city is not a fortress. It’s a promise — a living vow that a community will protect the dignity and safety of everyone who calls it home. It means that local governments and ordinary people alike will refuse to criminalize survival. That schools, clinics, churches, and shelters will remain safe spaces no matter who you are or where you were born. But the term reaches far beyond policy. It’s an ethic of belonging; a refusal to criminalize need, difference, or desperation. 
Sanctuary isn’t weakness. It’s courage. It takes moral strength to meet suffering with care instead of punishment, to believe that our neighbors’ safety is bound up in our own, to insist that safety is not achieved through force but through community, inclusion, and trust. It is living Matthew 25:40 out loud and in deed. It is an act of moral imagination and moral defiance. To hold sanctuary is to say: you belong here.

When we hold space for the most vulnerable — refugees, the unhoused, the undocumented, the disabled, the working poor, the displaced — we become something larger than a collection of individuals. We become a moral body. We do more than offer charity. We offer witness. We declare that the measure of a nation is found not in its towers or tanks, but in its tenderness.

Sanctuary cities are not lawless; they are soulful. They represent the conscience of the nation, a place where the laws of empathy still apply. To make sanctuary is to affirm that the United States is not merely a geographic territory, but a moral experiment: a republic that must constantly choose between fear and compassion, between domination and democracy. 
A nation’s soul is measured not by the might of its military, but by the mercy of its people. When helicopters circle our skies in the name of order, while food pantries struggle to feed the hungry, we are forced to ask: What are we defending, and from whom? The soul of a nation survives only when we make sanctuary for one another. Not through walls or weapons, but through compassion and collective will. If we allow intimidation to replace compassion, we will have traded our conscience for control.

Please know that despite the hum of war machines overhead, the conscience of our city — whimsical, creative, stubbornly kind — can still be heard.

Portland is not the problem. Portland is the reminder. A reminder that a city can still choose to be sanctuary. That a people can still choose to be human.
Reposted by Anya Kamenetz
kateschapira.bsky.social
I see people sharing this, maybe as an act of shared mourning, an attempt to stir action, or confirmation that the world sucks. The death of reef ecosystems pushed me into a panic about climate change in 2013 & led to me starting the Climate Anxiety Counseling booth in 2014. So, a few things (1/5)
brunojnavarro.bsky.social
… today, a group of 160 scientists from 23 countries is announcing that the planet has already reached its first major tipping point: the widespread death of warm-water coral reefs.
Corals are disappearing, pushing Earth to its first major ‘tipping point’
A new report says Earth has reached a dire milestone with the widespread death of warm-water coral reefs. It's not too late to save what remains.
grist.org
Reposted by Anya Kamenetz
Reposted by Anya Kamenetz
walkerbragman.bsky.social
Platner is so, so good at this.
grahamformaine.bsky.social
We have armed secret police kidnapping people off the street based on the color of their skin.

When we win: we will haul them before a Senate committee. The masks will come off. There will be consequences.
Reposted by Anya Kamenetz
courtneymilan.com
Does anyone have this in Spanish? I want to print double sided.
mollyknight.bsky.social
Whistling when ICE is about to kidnap someone for no reason is incredibly effective. They know what they are doing is wrong and will scatter in the wind when too many witnesses gather.
FORM A CROWD
STAY LOUD
PROTECT EACH OTHER
CODE I:
ICE NEARBY
BLOW QUICKLY IN A BROKEN RHYTHM:
PRE-PRE-PRE!
→ ALERTS THE COMMUNITY THAT ICE AGENTS ARE IN THE AREA.
ROGERS PARK WHISTLE PROTOCOLS
WHY A WHISTLE? ON THE STREETS
• A SIMPLE TOOL FOR FAST ALERTS.
• LOUD.
RECOGNIZABLE.
IMPOSSIBLE TO IGNORE.
• OUR VOICES ARE
STRONGER TOGETHER.
WHISTLES GUIDE
PEOPLE TO:
• FOLLOW ICE CARAVANS
• CATCH UP WITH THE CROWD
• ALERT NEIGHBORS
TO JOIN IN
NOISE = VISIBILITY.
CODE 2:
CODE RED
BLOW THREE LONG BLASTS:
PREEEE-PREEEE-PREEEE!
→ ICE IS DETAINING SOMEONE.
FORM A CROWD, STAY LOUD.
DON'T STAY SILENT. STAY NONVIOLENT.
WHY IT WORKS
• INSTANT ALERT
SYSTEM
• FASTER THAN SOCIAL MEDIA
• TURNS SILENCE INTO COMMUNITY
ACTION
ORIGINAL FLYER CREATED BY:
WHAT YOU CAN DO
• WEAR YOUR WHISTLE AROUND YOUR NECK
TEACH FAMILY
EIGHBORS TH
CODES
• USE IT WHEN ICE IS
SPOTTED
• PROTECT EACH OTHER, ALWAYS
TOGETHER, WE KEEP OUR COMMUNITY SAFE.
FORM A CROWD, STAY LOUD.
THIS FLYER DISTRIBUTED BY:
PROTECT RP
• @PROTECTRP_
anya1anya.bsky.social
My friends came together in mutual aid for one of us in a tight spot 2 x this weekend 💓💓
Reposted by Anya Kamenetz
miafarrow.bsky.social
Parents are standing guard at schools. Neighbors warn neighbors. Some restaurants have stopped delivering food or simply closed. “Every single person who looks brown is scared,” And fear of ICE ripples across Chicago

www.nytimes.com/2025/10/06/u...
Neighbors Warn Neighbors as Fear of ICE Ripples Across Chicago
www.nytimes.com
anya1anya.bsky.social
My kids and I are trying to find a synonym for cinnamon.
Reposted by Anya Kamenetz
anya1anya.bsky.social
I heard he was a Christian
kevinmkruse.bsky.social
Breaking the law so he can endanger the nation, Russ Vought arches an eyebrow as he strokes a white Persian cat on his lap.
sherylnyt.bsky.social
BREAKING: Friday night massacre underway at CDC. Doznes of "disease detectives," high-level scientists, entire Washington staff and editors of the MMWR (Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report) have all been RIFed and received the following notice:
Reposted by Anya Kamenetz
slackermom.bsky.social
Was just at a neighborhood school at dismissal. Hundreds of people with whistles surrounding the school and stationed down every block making sure ICE doesn’t snatch anyone. The same is happening at all the schools around here. I love my neighborhood and I love Chicago.
Reposted by Anya Kamenetz
gregsargent.bsky.social
By contrast, JB Pritzker told me that people should flood the No Kings protests precisely in order to let the American people know that something is deeply amiss.

More Dems should be doing this, to send the message widely that we are in real trouble right now.

newrepublic.com/article/2016...
anya1anya.bsky.social
While the bottom line is correct, I think this response takes the administration's allegations too seriously. The response should be a brief "we don't take orders."
jameeljaffer.bsky.social
MIT's response to the Trump admin's proposed "compact" is excellent and should be a model for other universities. orgchart.mit.edu/letters/rega...
anya1anya.bsky.social
= "a reactionary version of Christianity with aggressive ethno-nationalist sentiment. ...defined by a sense of grievance – by a perception that “our” country (“real America”) is being taken away from “us” (white Christians)."
anya1anya.bsky.social
Yes. This episode of the Daily had me yelling and spitting. Vought is a Christian nationalist extremist, not a small govt conservative who happens to be Christian.
thomaszimmer.bsky.social
We need to talk about Russell Vought – But Properly

Why certain mainstream outlets insist on sanitizing Vought as a devout “small government” conservative – and what actually animates his war against pluralistic democracy.

Some thoughts from my new piece:

🧵
We need to talk about Russell Vought – But Properly
Why certain mainstream outlets insist on sanitizing Vought as a devout “small government” conservative – and what actually animates his war against pluralistic democracy
steady.page