Meredith ap Robert

Category: politics

  • History from the cheap seats: Paris 2024

    History from the cheap seats: Paris 2024

    We arrived in Paris the night before the July 7 legislative elections. So much effort had been invested in the Olympic Games, but now, faced with the possibility of the far right coming in first place, the city was boarding up, unsure of what the night would hold.

  • I support Palestine because I’m queer, not in spite of it

    Maybe you’ve seen the meme: Queers for Palestine is like chickens for KFC. Join me as I take on some of the arguments that the LGBTQ community should be pro-Israel. For me, I’m pro-ceasefire, pro-peace, and pro-Palestine because I’m queer, not in spite of it.

  • Americans are the frog in the pot, part I: Grand Rapids

    Grand Rapids is a weird place to call home. Today it’s all breweries and hipsters and weed dispensaries and overpriced apartments. But growing up, it was Bland Rapids. A place so boring and unimaginative that corporations would come to town to trial new products. If the straight-laced, God-fearing people of Grand Rapids, Michigan, will buy…

  • Toronto Pearson, Terminal 3, the A Gates

    Toronto Pearson, Terminal 3, the A Gates

    In an airport that welcomes 50 million people every year, I’ve found a quiet corner. Tables empty. Outlets free. Plenty of seats at the bar. Just workless workers and captains of industry, keeping one another company in a world that’s waiting, between resignation and rebellion, for whatever’s next.

  • The religion of getting

    The religion of getting

    When I was 18, I worked as a barista. It wasn’t a bad job. But I will never forget the trainer, I’ll call him Sean, who—in addition to calling me a “PMS-y woman” during training—one day proclaimed, “I have the greatest job in the world.” 

  • Mental health, community, and giving a shit

    Mental health, community, and giving a shit

    When it comes to mental health, we have lots of misconceptions—and I think one of the biggest is that mental health difficulties are a phenomenon that occurs purely on the individual level, to be cured with the right balance of therapy, medication, and exercise. I know from personal experience that each of these can help…

  • Non-binary, but he/him is fine

    Non-binary, but he/him is fine

    I spent 30 years looking in the mirror trying to find myself, trying to make sense of myself. Or rather, trying to make sense of how I fit in—perhaps the most terribly cliché of human pursuits—and largely finding that I don’t. (I’m a medievalist for a reason.) Along the way, I played some good roles,…

  • We Were Supposed to Be a City on a Hill

    We Were Supposed to Be a City on a Hill

    In 1630, Puritan lawyer and governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony John Winthrop uttered the words that have come to represent the audacity of America’s founding enterprise: “For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people will be upon us.”  Three hundred and fifty years…

  • Democrats: Stop Talking Down to Voters

    Democrats: Stop Talking Down to Voters

    Well, here we are folks. Another Trump presidency. What has surprised me, and I think many, isn’t necessarily that Trump won, but that it wasn’t even close.  The numbers still aren’t final, but it looks like Kamala Harris got about 10 million fewer votes than Joe Biden in 2020, whereas Donald Trump has slightly surpassed…

  • This is my voice

    This is my voice

    I spent the final four months of undergrad at York St. John’s University, where I took a creative writing module.  I honestly don’t remember any of it very well, apart from two gems from the instructor: First, that I had been using “per se” incorrectly my whole life. (Thanks.) And second, in response to a…